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HYPNOTISM 

IN MENTAL AND 
MORAL CULTURE 

BY 
JOHN DUNCAN QUACKENBOS 

FELLOW OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MEDICINE 
MEMBER OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
FELLOW OF THE NEW HAMPSHIRE MEDICAL SOCIETY 
MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE 
ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE 




I 900 

HARPER &- BROTHERS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 



,ly\ 



'^'^^'^<^ 



44394 



Library of Congress 

Two Copies Received 
SEP 7 1900 

Copyright entry 

FfRST COPY., 

2nd Copy DeBveted' t& 

ORDER Division 

SEP 10 1900 






Copyright, igoo, by John Duncan Quackenbos 



^// rights reserved 



PREFACE 

This volume is not issued in illustration 
or in defence of the therapeutic efficiency of 
hypnotism — of the value of induced som- 
nambulism in the treatment of physical dis- 
ease. Interesting as a review of the history 
of post-hypnotic suggestion may be regarding 
its adaptation to the treatment of functional 
disorders of digestion, absorption, and circu- 
lation; of chronic constipation, sea-sickness, 
and eczema ; of nervous conditions repre- 
sented by hysteria, hystero-epilepsy, chorea, 
occupation neuroses, excessive perspiration, 
intractable insomnia, and especially that 
malady so peculiarly American in its dis- 
tribution, neurasthenia or nervous exhaus- 



Preface 

tion^ the flying signal of the nerve storm of 
our fashionable and business life; even of 
diseases characterized by severe pain, like 
sciatica, angina^ locomotor ataxia, tubercu- 
losis, and carcinoma — all which have been 
substantially relieved, and some permanent- 
ly cured, by reputable hypno-scientists both 
in this country and abroad — the author is 
under the necessity of confining himself 
largely to a consideration of the importance 
of suggestive treatment in moral obliquity, 
and in the development and exaltation of 
mind power. With the subject thus narrow- 
ed to the psychic field, a single direction 
will be followed in its discussion, viz., that 
of personal experience in this field. ISTo 
claim to originality is advanced beyond the 
thought that post-hypnotic suggestion may 
with great advantage be made supplemen- 
tary to the religious training of degenerate 
or vicious children, and that suggestibility 



Preface 

may be extensively utilized as a contributory 
factor to moral regeneration in schools, re- 
formatories, and prisons. The experiments 
have been made independently of what others 
are doing, and in premeditated ignorance of 
recent works on hypnotism. The conclu- 
sions reached are therefore unconnected with 
those of other investigators. 

When the thought occurred to the author 
during the winter of 1898-99 to test the 
availability of hypnotic suggestion as a 
means of removing criminal impulses and 
substituting conscience - sensitiveness for 
moral ana?sthesia among young criminals 
and castaways, he was convinced that the 
results of his invesigations would possess 
deep interest for the men and women of his 
profession, and he purposed publishing them, 
together with his conclusions, in the form of 
a medical monograph. But he was wholly 
unprepared for the sensation that has been 
vii 



Preface 

excited throughout this country and in Eu- 
rope by the premature birth of his report in 
the columns of the daily press. The demand 
for full and authentic information regarding 
hypnotic suggestion, which has suddenly be- 
come appreciated as a great moralizing power 
at its true worth and with an intelligent 
reference to the wide range of its applica- 
tions, explains the appearance of the present 
volume. 

The position therein taken in regard to the 
constructive treatment is high, but tenable; 
nor is it in the slightest degree at variance 
with the purest Christian belief and practice. 
There is no mystery about the procedures, 
nothing uncanny or occult in them. 'No 
supernatural gift is implied ; no theory of 
^' a magnetic influence." The results reach- 
ed must be gratifying to all who are working 
or wishing for the intellectual, ethical, and 
spiritual elevation of humanity. 



Preface 

In yielding to the requests of many friends 
of his work, by consenting to publish in a 
readable manual the results of his experi- 
ments, together with his personal conception 
as derived therefrom of the availability of 
hypnotism for the development of mind and 
for the cure of crime, the author of this vol- 
ume is actuated solely by a desire to extend 
a knowledge of suggestion, as a philanthropic 
instrumentality, among high-minded Ameri- 
can men and women. 

J. D. Q. 

Columbia University, April 22, 1900. 



/ 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

What is Hypnosis, and How is it Induced ? 3 

Auto-Suggestion 33 

Auto - Suggestion as the Modus Curandi of 
Christian and Mental Science .... 51 

Auto-Suggestion and Faith ....... 65 

Moral Reform Effected by Hypnotism in 
Contrast with Conversion Involving Mor- 
al Reform. The Ethical Victory ... 78 

Suggestion and Responsibility 83 

Moral Use of Hypnotism. Suggestion in the 

Treatment of the Cigarette Habit ... 97 
Dipsomania, Opsomania, Morphinomania . . 115 
Kleptomania and Habitual Falsehood . . 131 
Disequilibration, or Mental Unbalance : 

Moral Anesthesia 149 

Hypnotic Suggestion in the Treatment of 

Speech Defects 169 

xi 



Contents 



PAG J 



Imperative Ideas, Delusions, Melancholia, 
Insanity, and Loss of Memory as Condi 
TioNS Amenable to Hypnotic Treatment , 183 

Educational Use of Hypnotic Suggest ;on= 
Its Value in the Training of Erratic, 
Backward, and Unmanageable Children . ?.33 

Hypnotic Suggestion in the Inspiration* of 
Writers, and of Men and Women of the 
Stage. , .237 

Hypnotic Suggestion in the Development v : 
Voice and of Musical Talent 245 

Compulsory Hypnotism 253 

Conclusions Reached 263 

Limitations of Hypnotism ....... 283 



WHAT IS HYPNOSIS, AND 
HOW IS IT INDUCED? 



WHAT IS HYPNOSIS, AND 
HOW IS IT INDUCED? 

HYPi^rOSIS, or hypnotic sleep, implies a 
mind condition in which the mental 
action and the will - power of a sensitive 
subject are under the control of an oper- 
ator who has induced the state. It is charac- 
terized by insensibility to extraneous sounds 
or retinal images, and to ordinary impres- 
sions of sense organs ; but by quickened per- 
ception of sensations and thought-forms that 
are pictured by the hypnotist. 

The phenomena of hypnotism are scientifi- 
cally explicable on the supposition of a 
double self or duplex personality, each self 
having a distinct state of consciousness. One 
of these states is called the primary conscious- 
3 



Hypnotism in Culture 

ness, and for want of a better definition it 
may be explained as the self-luminonsness of 
the objective mind, the inner light in which 
all the actions of the waking mind are made 
visible to that mind. The other, called the 
secondary consciousness, holds those mental 
procedures of which, objectively, we know 
nothing — all automatic actions. Each hu- 
man being is thus an individual with two dis- 
tinct phases of existence, a combination of 
two personalities which do not shade into 
each other — the personality by which he is 
known to his associates, which takes cog- 
nizance of the outside world and consciously 
carries on the ordinary business of life ; and 
a higher, more subtle personality, which 
science has demonstrated to be capable of 
acting independently of a physical environ- 
ment, which, as the image of God, intuitively 
apprehends, and which the writer believes will 
assume relief after death as the essence of the 
4 



What is Hypnosis? 

pneuma or soul.^ The astonishing communi- 
cations of entranced mediums regarding 
events actually occurring in remote parts of 
the world at the very moment of their reve- 
lations are comprehensible only on the theory 
of supranormal perceptive powers possessed 
by subliminal self s acting at a distance from 
their physical bodies (a rational explanation 
of clairvoyance and clairaudience), or of au- 
tomatic communications between the sublimi- 
nal selfs of such unconscious mediums and 
outside personalities not human, who are 
cognizant of the events described, and are in- 
dependent of time and space limitations. 

Through hypnotization this subliminal 
or submerged self, which spontaneously as- 
serts itself in the natural somnambulistic 
state, is brought into active control. It has 

* And herein is to be found a scientific demon- 
stration of immortality. The objective self repre- 
sents spirit entangled with a physical body; the sub- 
jective self, pure ^^neuma, independent of brain cells. 

5 



Hypnotism in Culture 

long been known that a human being can be 
thrown into an artificial sleep during which 
he sustains such a relation to an operator 
who has induced it, that he is sensitive only 
to what the operator tells him he is sensitive 
to, and is wholly subject, so far as his mental 
operations and physical actions are concern- 
ed, to the volition of his hypnotist. A hypno- 
tized person sees, hears, tastes, smells, and 
feels what the operator says that he sees, 
hears, tastes, smells, and feels — and nothing 
else. For the time being, his individuality 
is surrendered to the person who has hypno- 
tized him. As a rule, he gives heed to the 
voice of no other person, and none but his 
hypnotizer can awaken him. His condition 
is one of passive obedience, the primary or 
objective consciousness being entirely in 
abeyance, and the subjective or subliminal 
self maintaining control of the intellectual 
field. His ears now become avenues of sug- 
6 



What is Hypnosis ? 

gestion; and thoughts intruded by precise 
emphatic declaration upon the subliminal 
consciousness promptly and irrevocably mod- 
ify character. Directions given are carried 
out in the minutest detail; and all elevated 
suggestions, though involving attitudes and 
actions conspicuously at variance with the 
patient's dominant ideas and daily routine, 
are accepted without criticism and fulfilled 
at the time and after waking. The subject 
believes and at last does all that he is told. 
He is constrained after waking to obey the 
impulses of his own superior self. In per- 
forming suggested acts, however, he has, only 
to a degree determined by the wish and skill 
of the operator, become an automaton. 

The superiority of hypnotism as an in- 
strumentality for exalting human character 
over the conventional methods of instructing, 
reforming, and persuading to meritorious 
action, is thus as unique as it is startling. 
7 



Hypnotism in Culture 

The moralist and preacher address the self 
that is not in control, the flesh-entangled, 
hesitating, easily tempted and entrapped ob- 
jective self; hence their appeals are so often 
futile. The suggest ionist invokes the better 
subliminal self, invests it with control, and 
seldom fails to effect the desired purpose. 
Discriminating hypnotic suggestion is thus 
a more powerful agent than objective relig- 
ious exhortation for the moral reformation 
of the young and thoughtless. 

Human beings are hypnotizable by other 
human beings, between whom and themselves 
exists a peculiar sympathy or harmonious re- 
lationship known as rap]port. I have reach- 
ed the conclusion that every person of ordi- 
nary intellectual capacity can hypnotize some 
other persons, and that the great mass of men 
are hypnotizable. Various methods of in- 
ducing hypnosis are practised, all having 
in view the fixation of the attention upon 



What is Hypnosis ? 

some monotonous stimulus of the eye or ear, 
as sedative music, or a bright object like the 
nickel-plated point-protector of a lead-pen- 
cil, a transparent crystal, a stud in the shirt- 
bosom, or the eyes of the operator.^ In cer- 
tain instances such a procedure may be profit- 
ably supplemented by light passes, or by 
holding firmly the hand of the patient, by 
pressing it against the forehead of the oper- 
ator, or by contact of foreheads, while the 
whole force of one's personality is concen- 
trated in an effort to overcome any automatic 
resistance to hypnotization. 

The technic adopted by me is as follows: 
After talking sympathetically with the sub- 

* Perfumes also have hypnotic power; the odor of 
May blossoms, of new -won hay, of balm of Gilead 
firs, unquestionably contributes to the induction of 
mental placidness and so to mental surrender. The 
same may be said of certain colors, although the col- 
ors that possess hypnotic influence vary with the per- 
sonality impressed. Pinks of low chroma seem to 
have the widest range of applicability. 

9 



Hypnotism in Culture 

ject, sometimes for an hour or two, in regard 
to the failing which he wishes removed, thor- 
oughly acquainting myself with his dominant 
propensities or controlling thoughts, and, 
above all, securing his confidence, I ask him 
to assume a comfortable reclining j)osition on 
a lounge, and then, while continuing a sooth- 
ing conversation, I manage in a way deter- 
mined by the circumstances of the case to 
concentrate his attention upon a suspended 
diamond or on a carnelian seal set in an old- 
fashioned gold pencil which I happened upon 
among my heirlooms. The Cambay stone is 
held in such a position within the natural 
focus of the eyes as to compel an exaggerated 
convergence of the axes of the balls, coupled 
with an upward gaze. Such unusual exercise 
of the ocular muscles soon tires them out ; the 
retinal areas involved are rapidly fatigued 
by the deep redness and brilliancy of the 
carnelian; and simultaneously the patient 

IQ 



What is Hypnosis ? 

is urged to thinh of nothing, to renounce the 
very intention of renouncing mental effort, 
and to give himself up to me with perfect 
confidence in the purity of my motives and 
in my ability to remove or modify his moral 
or mental disorder. Under these conditions 
the eyeballs soon become fixed, a vacant stare 
replaces the usual intelligent look, and the 
eyelids begin to close and reopen spasmodi- 
cally/^ At this stage the suggestion is given 
that refreshing sleep is about to ensue; and 
in a few moments a prolonged breath is tak- 
en, the lids close with a slow, regular move- 
ment, deep inspirations follow, and I know 
that I have been given possession of that soul 

* Some patients describe a sensation of weight on 
the eyelids. Others speak of a vapor that seems to 
come between them and the object their gaze is 
fixed upon, accompanied with a peculiar tingling in 
the arms and lower limbs, or with a feeling as if 
nervous currents of gentle and sustained flow were 
coursing through the body, inducing a physical and 
mental calm which culminates in unconsciousness. 

U 



Hypnotism in Culture 

for sucli a time as I may prescribe, to do with 
it wliat I will. 

In cases so difficult that ordinary methods 
of hypnotization prove of no avail, and in 
mild forms of insanity, the author has adopt- 
ed a more potent method of securing the de- 
sired influence. The patient is placed in a 
high-backed chair, vis-a-vis to the operator, 
each of his hands in one of the hypnotist's, 
and their knees and feet in contact. He is 
then stared into a state of suggestible sleep, 
which usually supervenes in from ten to fif- 
teen minutes. The ordeal is extremely trying 
to the operator, who looks into the subject's 
soul from eyes " as unwinking as the lidless 
orbs of the Genius of Destruction." The 
mesmerizee may occasionally glance aside, 
but his eyes, as if drawn by some irresistible 
charm, revert to those of the hypnotist. A 
peculiar expression of surrender (once seen, 
never forgotten) pervades his countenance, 



What is Hypnosis ? 

deep inspirations begin, the eyes close heavily 
and become sealed, and the head retains the 
position in which it may be placed for com- 
fort or convenience. In the case of subjects 
who at once become cataleptic and only par- 
tially lethargic, the operator may secure suc- 
cess by redoubling his efforts to concentrate 
his whole mind and force the thought of sleep 
upon the personality in rapport, with hands 
placed firmly on the chest of the subject and 
with gaze unrelaxed. An hypnotic may see 
plainly through closed lids: 

"Strange state of being (for 'tis still to be), 
Senseless to feel, and with sealed eyes to see." 

— Bykon. 

Hypnotization by revolving mirrors or 
other machinery, which may be effected even 
while the operator is not present, is to be con- 
demned for all higher work. There must 
be thrown into the procedure as much as 
possible of the overmastering personality of 
13 



Hypnotism in Culture 

the suggestionistj who is assumed always to 
be pre-emiuently stronger than the subject in 
the particular line of the aid asked. Ma- 
chine hypnotism succeeds in about thirty 
per cent, of the cases attempted; whereas 
eighty to ninety per cent, yield to the wisely 
directed personal energy of a properly quali- 
fied fellow-being. The real work is accom- 
plished through the action of mind on mind. 
The responsibility of the moments that fol- 
low the induction of hypnosis is awful be- 
yond power of language to picture. The 
operator stands in a closer relation to the 
mind in rapport than father or mother, teach- 
er or preacher, husband or wife can ever at- 
tain; and it becomes his Christian manhood 
to act only as the vicegerent of the Almighty 
in the use he makes of this great power and 
sacred opportunity^ Would he dare to 
smutch a soul so completely at his mercy 
with a single untoward thought ? Would 
14 



What is Hypnosis ? 

he venture to trifle Avith what is holy in that 
character? Would he presume, unprepared 
and unequipped, to strike the sweet bells of 
that intellect '' all jangled out of tune " — he 
who may have in five brief moments changed 
the dazed and distraught face of an Ophelia 
into a countenance of rare beauty and peace 
b}^ suggestions appropriate to the mental con- 
ditions — he who may have seen damning de- 
lusions give way and suicidal mania dispelled 
and criminal tendencies blotted out and mor- 
al leprosy cleansed, because harmonious and 
at the same time exalted ideals, chaste 
thoughts, and wholesome aspirations have 
been held up before worn-out, crippled, mis- 
guided minds ? Is it to be wondered at that 
a scrupulous suggestionist looks upon hypno- 
tism with reverence, and comes to regard it 
as a great instrumentality for the moral and 
spiritual uplifting of the human race ? 

To accomplish his part in the work of re- 
^5 



Hypnotism in Culture 

form, it is essential that the hjpnotizer should 
be a person of pronounced moral principle, 
and should love his neighbor's character as 
his own from the Christian stand-point. He 
must see the godlike even in the depraved 
brother — the better self, the reflection of the 
Almighty's image in the criminal and the out- 
cast. However obscure, however distorted, it 
must be his lofty purpose to give definition to 
this image; and we well know that as the 
image of the intellectual and ethical divine 
assumes its clear and beautiful proportions, 
all sensual thought-forms are forced out of 
focus. The climax of Christian altruism is 
reached in this giving of soul to save soul. 
And the secret of success consists in the sub- 
stitution of lofty and happy standards for 
the sinful impulses and demoralizing beliefs 
that hold sway. The reader can judge of the 
responsibility resting upon a conscientious 
physician who undertakes this, of the knowl- 
i6 



What is Hypnosis ? 

edge of the patient's inner life that is re- 
quired, of the phenomenal discrimination and 
the unswerving principle essential to moral 
triumphs. A high - minded hypnotist will 
make no compromise with vice. 

'Nor are infallible judgment and unassail- 
able principle the only requisites to the suc- 
cess of an operator who meddles with the 
complicated machinery of the mind. The 
general knowledge which is implied in the 
higher education of the day, as well as a spe- 
cial acquaintance w^ith the natural history 
of mental and nervous diseases, is equally in- 
dispensable. A practitioner of hypnotism 
should be a proficient in the physical sciences, 
in literature, language, belles - lettres, art, 
sociology, theology — for he never knows 
info what field the necessities of a given 
case may carry him, or upon what de- 
partment of knowledge he may be compelled 
to draw for his constructive treatment. Gen- 
B 17 



Hypnotism in Culture 

eralities are of little avail; puerilities are 
worse than useless. In treating a moral per- 
vert recently, I suddenly found myself eon- 
strained to present constructively to his sub- 
liminal self the functions and technic of the 
novelette, the only justifiable outlet for his 
diseased mental energies being in the direc- 
tion of fiction-writing. In the case of an- 
other patient, who had become infected in 
India with pantheistic ideas, I was obliged 
to sound the depths of Vedanta philosophy. 
In a third instance, I was under the necessity 
of explaining to a hypnotized woman that 
she could not commit the unpardonable sin 
(ascribing the miracles of Christ to the power 
of Satan), and thus succeeded in removing 
the delusion. One's knowledge, moreover, 
must be immediately accessible, as there* is 
generally neither time nor opportunity to 
hunt at force the appropriate antidote for 
a morbid fear, imperative conception, or de- 
i8 



What is Hypnosis? 

lusional mental state— and hunting counter 
is fatal. The ideal suggestionist must be a 
carefully educated man. Ignorance in an 
operator is a disqualifying defect ; soul-exalt- 
ing suggestions are full of atmosphere. Per- 
haps no one human mind, however highly 
trained and widely philanthropic, can be suf- 
ficiently comprehensive to apply suggestive 
treatment successfully to every case encoun- 
tered. 

It is not necessary, in order to insure the 
beneficial effects of hypnotism, to carry the 
subject into the deeper somnambulous stage 
characterized by intellectual alertness and ap- 
parently purposive acts, but by absence of re- 
action to sense impressions. The conversion 
of a hypnotized patient into a somnambule 
is always to be deprecated. In the first stage 
of deep hypnotic sleep, the subliminal self 
unhesitatingly accepts every emphatic state- 
ment of the hypnotizer ; but even where som- 
19 



Hypnotism in Culture 

nolism is not complete and a state of semi- 
conscionsness exists, suggestions are acqui- 
esced in hj the patient. Lethargy is by no 
means essential to success. This fact is not 
generally realized, the popular opinion being 
that the subject must pass into a cataleptic 
state or trance, during the continuance of 
which seemingly miraculous changes are 
wrought by the hypnotist. But in liypno- 
toid states, or states of incomplete hypnosis, 
characterized by partial consciousness and 
limited power of memory, suggestions are 
also efficacious, and such states seem to be 
especially adapted to educational work — the 
development of the mental faculties and the 
conversion of potential into active genius. It 
is needless to enlarge upon the tact, patience, 
and erudition required for labor in this field. 
Almost any sane person may be brought into 
a hypnotic condition of objective passiveness 
by a skilful and persevering operator. 
20 



What is Hypnosis ? 

The deliberate forcing of a thought upon 
the mind of a partially hypnotized or even an 
unhypnotized person with the result of se- 
curing the uplift in view, is a procedure 
sometimes resorted to by the author when 
hypnotization is difficult or impossible. In 
his practice, this ^' thinking the thought into 
the mind of the subject " usually implies 
the subject's consent. It may be done (and 
he has done it) without the knowledge or 
consent of the person operated upon; and it 
can be done even without the co-operation 
of the hypnotist's will, when in the line of 
his imperative desires. It were idle to spec- 
ulate on the medium of communication — the 
manner in which a subjective mind projects 
its wish or thought, unbeknown to its objec- 
tive fellow, with a strength sufficient to hypno- 
tize a separate duplex personality. There 
are in the life about us presences that can be 
felt — that compel thought and action on 

21 



Hypnotism in Culture 

planes higher than average levels — ^T\dthout 
conscious intention of bettering or exalting. 
Contact with a nature so near of kin to the 
Infinite is a continuous inspiration. It 
stimulates progressive character nutrition 
in environing selfs, which unfold impercep- 
tibly, yet surely and grandly, year by year, 
till they borrow, against the fulness of their 
bloom, from the mighty personality that 
spontaneously spells and sways and lifts 
them, the pure fragrance of the soul. 

The question is often asked. How long does 
it take to hypnotize a person ? Usually from 
two to fifteen minutes are occupied in estab- 
lishing somnolism; but there are refractory 
cases that require from one to two hours of 
intense mental effort on the part of the physi- 
cian. Children readily come into rapport, 
and as a rule are easily impressed. Suffer- 
ers from acute nervous depression, watch- 
ful or suspicious patients, and persons under 



What is Hypnosis? 

the influence of a stimulant are difficult sub- 
jects. Tea, coffee, or whiskey, before a treat- 
ment, is an obstacle to its success ; and the 
simultaneous pursuit of any other means of 
cure splinters the faith of the patient, so that 
he secures benefit from neither. 

As to the awaking of an hypnotic, he may 
be told that at a specified time he will open 
his eyes ; or that the operator will rouse him 
after he has enjoyed a refreshing sleep. In 
rare instances a patient may continue to sleep 
long after he has been directed to awaken, 
^o harm will come of allowing him to slum- 
ber on ; for during hypnotic sleep a mass of 
nervous energy is stored up, and the system 
is in consequence put into a condition favor- 
able to the establishment of functional har- 
mony. For this reason certain foreign neu- 
rologists " are treating nervous patients by 

* Wetterstrand and Voisin. As far back as 1839 
a Paris physician (Dr. Chandel) treated two sisters 



Hypnotism in Culture 

prolonged hypnosis, keeping them entranced 
for several weeks at a time, and arousing 
them at intervals by suggestion, to take nour- 
ishment or attend to personal wants. Foolish 
attempts on the part of thoughtless or igno- 
rant by-standers to interfere with the man- 
agement of an hypnotic, in the way of sug- 
gesting or awaking from sleep, have been 
followed by distressing and even alarming 
symptoms. 

There is no memory in profound hypnosis 

for incipient tuberculosis by keeping them under hyp- 
notic influence for three months, assuring them from 
day to day of their progressive improvement and of 
the certainty of their ultimately overcoming the dis- 
ease. They went about with their eyes open, but in 
states of personality distinct from those of their pre- 
vious life. The effect of the treatment was a marked 
increase in weight, a disappearance of all tubercular 
symptoms, and a restoration to robust health. The 
girls were dehyi^notized a short distance from the 
capital: and when restored to their objective selfs, 
their three months' life of artificial somnabulism was 
a perfect blank. Their last definite recollections were 
of snow on the ground in Paris. 
24 



What is Hypnosis ? 

of the affairs of every-day life, nor, after 
awaking, of what has taken place during the 
hypnotic state ; but in a subsequent hypnotic 
condition, the occurrences of the first hypno- 
tism are recalled. Subjects who have not 
been lethargic will sometimes insist that they 
have consciously heard the suggestions. 
When asked to repeat them, such persons 
usually fail. They should never be argued 
with on the subject, but told that even if 
they did hear the suggestions, good is 
coming from the treatment — which is true. 
It is essential to divert their attention from 
the occurrences of the seance. Extremely 
neurotic persons to whom the suggestions 
are at first consciously audible, become as 
a rule more and more somnolent with each 
subsequent trial. Patients who have been 
profoundly lethargic often declare that they 
have not been asleep at all. In normal sleep 

there is after waking an ill-defined conscious- 
25 



Hypnotism in Culture 

ness of the passage of time ; in hypnosis, there 
is none. Hence the degree of accuracy with 
which lapse of time is estimated by an hyp- 
notic may be accepted as a general indica- 
tion of the deepness of his sleep. 

Suggestions out of harmony with opportu- 
nities, the possibilities of a career, common- 
sense, or religious convictions, are unlikely 
to be fulfilled. Fortunately for the protec- 
tion of society, the power of suggestion to de- 
prave is providentially limited, while its 
influence for good is without horizon. A 
mesmerizee quickly discovers the hypocrite 
in a suggestionist, and a pure soul Avill al- 
Avays revolt at the intrusion of a sordid or 
sensual self and spontaneously repel its ad- 
vances. Whereas it is comparatively easy 
to change the nature of a kleptomaniac, it 
is hardly possible to make an honest person 
steal through post-hypnotic suggestion. On 

the other hand, criminal suggestions to an 
26 



What is Hypnosis 



evilly disposed subject would naturally lead 
to criminal acts. The mind affects the line 
of least resistance. 

In cases where a weak or immature mind 
has been brought under the influence of a 
stronger but unprincipled personality, disil- 
lusionment or dehypnotization by a sugges- 
tionist of marked personal magnetism and 
pronounced moral convictions is assured. 
Eeversing in a patient an attitude intention- 
ally or unconsciously produced either by him- 
self or an outsider is possible, though not 
always easy, to a hypnotist. Collitigant 
suggestions recall the philosophy of the house 
divided against itself. A fair kleptomaniac 
who had been successfully treated during the 
spring was returned to me by her mother 
six weeks after her discharge because of an 
unfounded suspicion that a relapse was im- 
pending. To my surprise, the girl, who had 
been most docile on previous occasions, re- 
27 



Hypnotism in Culture 

sented all my advances, and the interview 
ended in a scene that was far from creditable 
to the young lady. At a loss to comprehend 
her change of attitude, I consulted my rec- 
ords and found that my final suggestion had 
been : " You are now done with me. You 
need my help no longer. You are going 
through the summer without a dishonest ac- 
tion." The girl had simply resented any 
further attempt of mine to hypnotize her by 
reason of this imperative suggestion, realiz- 
ing that she had not sinned and that the sum- 
mer had hardly begun. 

Finally, the success of hypno-science meth- 
ods depends largely on the desire of the sub- 
ject to be cured, and his faith in the power 
of the suggestionist selected. Given these, 
and the battle is more than half won. As a 
rule, there is no hope of securing the consent 
of a patient while the controlling passion is 
in paroxysm. But in the subsequent reac- 
28 



What is Hypnosis P 

tionary stage, appeal may often successfully 
be made to the regrets, fears, self-respect, or 
higher instincts of the unfortunate, and ac- 
quiescence thus secured. Under such cir- 
cumstances, a high-principled operator is 
almost sure to establish a rapport. I am firm- 
ly of opinion that a Christian philanthropist 
who sees a reflection of the image of God 
somewhere in the soul even of a reprobate 
brother or sister, and who is honestly ani- 
mated with a desire to illuminate the better 
self in shadow — I believe such a person is to 
a greater or less degree en rapport with every 
human being. 



AUTO-SUGGESTION 



AUTO-SUGGESTION 

HYP^^OTIC treatment is frequently re- 
inforced by wliat is called auto-sugges- 
tion. It is a psychological fact that the sub- 
jective mind of a given individual is as amen- 
able to suggestion by his own objective mind 
as by the objective mind of an outside person 
or a spiritual intelligence. Suggestion by 
an objective consciousness to its own sublim- 
inal self is known as auto-suggestion. 

It is my practice, where the circumstances 
of the case will permit, and such reinforce- 
ment seems advisable, to supplement the treat- 
ment described in the previous chapter with 
auto-hypnotization. The state of mental ab- 
straction called reverie, immediately preced- 
ing natural sleep, has been found exceedingly 
C 33 



Hypnotism in Culture 

appropriate for treatment by this kind of sug- 
gestibility ; and I advise my patients as they 
are about yielding to slumber to say to them- 
selves that they will no longer be slaves of the 
dominant idea or of the vice which is wreck- 
ing their lives. Lapse into sleep with such 
a thought paramount all but equivalents sug- 
gestion by a hypnotist. When, for instance, 
a tobacco, alcohol, or drug slave presents him- 
self for treatment, actuated by a sincere de- 
sire to escape from the bondage of his evil 
habit, he is recommended to conceive himself 
free as he is falling asleep, and directed to 
think determinedly in such lines as these: 
'' Whiskey is unnecessary to my physical wel- 
fare; it is injuring my health and my brain 
powers. I do not need it. I shall no longer 
use it to enable me to accomplish work in ex- 
cess of what is reasonable. I am done with 
dependence on its stimulating effects. I 
shall stand on my own resources hereafter, 
34 



Auto-Suggestlon 

utilizing such units of force as are supplied 
by the assimilation of natural food. I will 
cease to draw on the reserve fund of my vital- 
ity/' Addiction to the use of alcohol is cur- 
able through this channel alone, although 
complete reform may not be so immediate 
as in the case of hypnotization by an out- 
sider. Auto - suggestion J however, will be 
found a most useful adjuvant in many cases 
where hypnotism is deemed advisable ; and it 
should be explained to the objective self of 
an adult patient seeking a cure. In certain 
instances I have ordered treatment by auto- 
suggestion during the interval preceding a 
first appointment for hypnotic impression, 
and am told by patients how substantially 
they have been aided thereby in their efforts 
at reform. Under such circumstances auto- 
suggestion renders doubly effective treatment 
by post-hypnotic suggestion, which should 
promptly follow. The one is complement- 
35 



Hypnotism in Culture 

arj to the other; and the more intelligent 
the patient, the more satisfactory the re- 
sult. 

That an objective consciousness can sug- 
gest so forcefully to its own subjective con- 
sciousness as to be itself swayed reflexly 
by that subjective consciousness which it has 
itself impressed, and in the one line of its 
impression — is a most marvellous fact of 
mind. Auto-suggestion is the great psycho- 
logical miracle, and few realize the part it 
plays in the drama of life. It accounts for 
much self-deception and self -elation ; it regu- 
lates the number of births among intelligent 
people, and explains the increase of sterility 
among American women ; it renders immune 
from disease and perpetuates diseased states ; 
it has changed non-contagious into contagious 
maladies; it is lord of the realm of habit; it 
is the medium of utterance for hereditary 
tendencies; it lays bare the secret of infiu- 
36 



Auto-Suggestion 

ence, the influence of what is seen and heard, 
of things unsaid, of things undone ; it explains 
the accomplishment of seemingly impos- 
sible feats; it is the channel through which 
genius finds expression; and it may be con- 
tended with no small show of reason that the 
subliminal self of a Stratford butcher's ap- 
prentice, under the spell of an objective sug- 
gestion inspired in his boyhood by the Pag- 
eants of Coventry, created the deathless plays 
of Shakespeare.* 

* A writer in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal of 
August 7, 1852, ingeniously suggests that the ques- 
tion, Who wrote Shakespeare? might be made the 
theme for as much critical sagacity as the equally in- 
teresting question, Who wrote Homer ? He takes the 
ground that Hamlet and his fellows are not only 
the productions of one mind, but are beyond com- 
parison the greatest productions which man's in- 
tellect, not divinely inspired, has yet achieved. Who 
conceived these characters? Certainly not the cau- 
tious, calculating business man of Stratford, who al- 
ways had money to lend and money to spend, who 
worked for the good things of this world, and was 
without a higher education. Then follows the clever 

37 



Hypnotism in Culture 

The means employed to tempt the objective 
self to impress its own subliminal self for 
the purpose of inclining to meritorious, fool- 
ish, or reprehensible action on the part of 
that objective self, are everywhere conspicu- 
ous. The devices of tradesmen to entrap 
the duplex personality have become notori- 
ous. The objective self is first impressed 
through the sense organs; it then begins, 

explanation that this Shakespeare kept a poet — this 
keen-sighted man, careless of fame and intent on 
money-getting, found in some London garret a pale 
student, upon whose genius he drew for the dramas 
that were palmed off on a credulous public as his 
own. Shakespeare's friends would fall in with the 
deception. The kept poet could be sent on tours, be- 
come filled with historical associations, and learn in- 
timately the geographical features of many sections 
for delineation in the plays. Thus the scenery of 
Macbeth might easily be accounted for, Shakespeare 
himself having never been in Scotland. This theory 
disposes of many of the difficulties that have baffled 
the critics; yet if Ben Jonson's statement is to be be- 
lieved, that Shakespeare really wrote Shakespeare, 
the poet the Stratford money-monger kept was his 
own subliminal self. 

38 



Auto-Suggestion 

often unwittingly, its work of suggesting to 
its subliminal fellow the desirability or pro- 
priety or necessity of purchasing what is ill- 
adapted, perhaps unnecessary, generally use- 
less, often injurious. The controlling de- 
sire is next transmitted in a return current, 
as an imi:)erative automatic demand, to the 
self that acts through bodily organs, and the 
purpose of your solicitor, window-decorator, 
di splay er of tempting wares, or bargain- 
counter liar, is accomplished. 

The science of advertising is based on the 
foregoing principle; and there is no better 
illustration of this fact than is to be found in 
its relation to the patent-medicine business. 
A patent medicine is a medicine whose com- 
position is concealed in order that it may be 
advertised as a marvellous specific. It is 
usually composed of some worthless simple 
other than represented, or contains substances 
dangerous to health and life. As a rule, it 
39 



Hypnotism in Culture 

is got up by some man or woman with little 
or no pretension to medical education, who 
flourishes like a parasite on a deluded public, 
and trifles with human life, recklessly in- 
different to consequences. Many of these 
persons are criminally responsible for ob- 
taining money under false pretences (their 
goods not being as represented), as well as 
for fraudulently administering drugs that 
undermine the bodily and mental health of 
those who buy — and all this under the pious 
pretext of renovating an exhausted body and 
restoring the powers of a jaded brain. 

The patent-medicine business is an im- 
mense business, and like a great octopus ex- 
tends its sucker-covered arms into the very 
vitals of trade. Half the rural newspapers 
would be forced into bankruptcy were it not 
for the lying advertisements of the manu- 
facturers of proprietary drugs. The coun- 
try pharmacists would have to put out their 
40 



Auto-Suggestion 

lamps; the country stores would hardly pay 
their expenses; the printing establishments 
would see the traditional wolf stretched out 
on their door-mats, if it were not for the sag- 
was, vegetable compounds, nervines, and 
golden remedies which are advertised ^^ to 
bring men and women out of torture worse 
than death." The object of these advertise- 
ments, placards, and pictures, is to induce this 
torture by impressing thought-forms on the 
thought machines or brains of credulous per- 
sons — who are physically well, and among 
whom disease increases in the same ratio as 
patent-medicine advertisements. The dis- 
eased thoughts, and thoughts of disease sug- 
gested thereby to the objective self and then 
transferred to the subliminal self, are brought 
to a focus in the material bodily organs, and 
imaginary sickness, even more prolific of dis- 
comfort and pain than actual organic 
disease, is the result. The charlatan has 
41 



Hypnotism in Culture 

attained his object; he has produced a 
state of mind in harmony with his false 
representations, and fattens thenceforth 
on the distresses induced thereby in his vic- 
tims. The bold, offensive, and terrifying ad- 
vertisements of the day represent a system- 
ized attempt on the part of a legion of em- 
pirics to create disease for the benefit of 
their pockets. Through the complementary 
action of the two selfs the mind tends to be- 
come like whatever it dwells upon. '^ To 
look on noble forms,'' wrote Tennyson, 
^^ makes noble, through the sensuous organ- 
ism, that which is higher;" so, to become 
conversant with the circulars, advertisements, 
hand-bills, and disgusting portraitures of 
these unprincipled nostrum-venders, tends to 
a permanent state of nervous and mental de- 
pression. Constant thought of any condition 
produces a cortex habit, and through the 
operation of the duplex self induces the con- 
43 



Auto-Suggestion 

dition; and this is the foulest imaginable 
prostitution of the noblest profession known 
to man. In a work on medicine, published 
at Eome two centuries before the Christian 
era, Cato the Censor exclaimed against the 
Greek physicians who were being attracted 
to Italy. For five hundred years, he said, 
the people had led healthy and happy lives, 
in blissful ignorance of the medical faculty ; 
but let these Greek doctors come into Eome, 
and there will soon be diseases enough to 
treat. History proved the truth of the wise 
old man's foresight. 

Every practitioner of medicine is aware 
that the drugs he administers are rendered 
more effective by a belief in their efficacy. 
Confidence in a doctor engenders life-serving 
auto-suggestion; whereas doubt or absence 
of all faith in a physician and his treatment 
is apt to be accompanied with negative re- 
sults. ^^ The talisman is faith." For this 
43 



Hypnotism in Culture 

reason a knowledge of the remedies pre- 
scribed is often concealed from the patient 
in order to baffle any automatic resistance 
to the physiological action of familiar med- 
icines. A moral may in like manner be 
drawn from the credulity of the modern pub- 
lic, who are ready to believe every tale of mi- 
raculous cure reported and illustrated in the 
daily press. The greater the improbability, 
the more readily do the gulls seize and swal- 
low it — faith cures, mind cures, gold and 
other drink - habit cures. Christian Science 
cures, consumption cures, cancer pastes and 
plasters, and a thousand embrocations, elix- 
irs, salves, syrups, and potions. Each num- 
bers its disappointed victims by the thousand, 
and experience seems to be a very poor teach- 
er, so far as these fad-chasing sufferers are 
concerned. The philosophy of such credulity 
is as follows : The subjects want to be cured, 
and by exaggerated suggestions they deceive 
44 



Auto-Suggestion 

their own subliminal selfs into monstrous 
beliefs regarding the possibilities of cure, 
and rise time after time to the most clumsily 
offered lures. Similarly, through auto-sug- 
gestion, some patients become persuaded that 
they are not suffering from organic disease, 
pass on through the several stages of its prog- 
ress without invoking the aid of a physician, 
and find themselves face to face with death 
before they are undeceived. Such is the in- 
evitable outcome of mental and Christian 
Science treatment, so far as organic diseases 
are concerned. 

Auto-suggestion explains in part the tri- 
umphs of Moody at Northfield. Under the 
spell of his eloquence, his listeners, without 
resolution or even consciousness on their 
part, were wont to conform through the oper- 
ation of their aroused subliminal selfs to the 
elevated ideals held up before them. Auto- 
suggestion accounts for many an impromptu 
45 



Hypnotism in Culture 

verdict rendered by an automatically acting 
jury in response to the appeals of a master 
at the bar or the attitude of a partial judge. 
Auto-suggestion makes plain the influence 
of words on the minds and hearts of those 
who use them. How true it is that by em- 
ploying sophistry with others, men run the 
risk of imposing on themselves ; and by often 
repeating a statement which they know to be 
false, come at last through the force of words 
to believe it to be true. The subliminal self 
accepts the falsehood as verity, and reports it 
as such to the objective consciousness. Traf- 
fickers in gossip and scandal intuitively ply 
their trade through the various channels of 
suggestion. 

The very saloon has its psychology, and 
the sensuous elements that surround the bar 
— fountains, flowers, birds of song, glittering 
glass-ware, realistic paintings — captivate the 
objective self, and through it force sugges- 
46 



Auto-Suggestion 

tions on the subliminal self that take God out 
of the character and the career. 

Lastly, the Church itself has figured as 
mistress of the art of suggestion, of the utili- 
zation of sensuous means to induce states of 
mind favorable to the reception of its dog- 
mas. In proof of this, note the repeated 
sense impression ^ by the dramatic elements 
of the mass, by the mural decorations of 
houses of worship, the fretted arches, the 
altar shrines, the marble figures and storied 
arras, the solemn lights transmitted through 
subtly tinted panes of clerestory windows, 
the delicious music contrived to gratify the 
ear and plunge the mind into a passive mood 
appropriate to suggestion by ecclesiastical 
professionals, the rich incense adroitly cal- 
culated to act as a hypnotic agent through 
the organs of olfaction. Religion appealed 
from every part of a mediaeval cathedral or 
abbey church to the subliminal self through 
47 



Hypnotism in Culture 

sense captivation, not through conviction of 
the understanding, the proper basis of belief. 
Christianity is distinctly the religion of in- 
tellect, and those who embrace it are expected 
to have convincing reasons for the hope that 
is within them. Of this great truth, even 
modern churchmen have been too often for- 
getful. 



AUTO-SUGGESTION AS THE 
MODUS CURANDI OF CHRIS- 
TIAN AND MENTAL SCIENCE 



AUTO-SUGGESTION AS THE 
MODUS CURANDI OF CHRIS- 
TIAN AND MENTAL SCIENCE 

SO-CALLED Christian Science, anti- 
christian in its pantheism and un- 
scientific in its technic, has seized upon auto- 
snggestion as a means not only to achieve its 
seemingly wonderful, yet perfectly under- 
stood cures, but also to elevate mind and bet- 
ter mora^ 

It were idle to deny that Christian 
Science procedures relieve the sick. Every 
one who is conversant with the subject is 
aware that pain is quieted, that functional 
disorders are cured, that the suffering con- 
nected with organic diseases is borne with 
increased fortitude, and that both the emo- 
51 



Hypnotism in Culture 

tional and the moral nature are singularly 
strengthened as a result of Christian Science 
treatment. The object of such treatment, 
to quote from Mary Baker Glover Eddy's 
Science and Health, is " to destroy the 
patient's belief in his physical condition." 
The proof that the agent of such destruction 
is auto-suggestion, cleverly called into action 
by the voodoos of this cult, is to be found in 
Mrs. Eddy's own statements, as well as in the 
explanations and reported experiences of her 
patients. The alternative — which, by the 
way, this woman arrogates — is the direct 
application of a supernatural power vouch- 
safed by the Almighty to her and to the im- 
postors who are disseminating Christian 
Science doctrines and methods. All place 
themselves upon an equal footing with Jesus 
Christ (a Christian Scientist in advance of 
his age), and claim to '^ heal " in the same 
way as, they assert, He " healed," by the 
52 



Christian Science 

power of mind over matter. In the transac- 
tion of this business of " healing," they act 
as spiritual brokers, always for a liberal com- 
mission, to negotiate on the floor of the 
Celestial Exchange for what they are pleased 
to call ^' the action of the divine mind over 
the human mind and body/' 

Both Christian Science healer and hyp- 
notic operator seek to alleviate or remove 
pain by impressing the mind of the sufferer 
— the one, with the idea that it actually does 
not exist; the other, that the subliminal 
mind will so regulate the outflow of nerve 
energy to the affected organ or tissue as to 
induce a nervous diversion, naturally accom- 
panied with deadened perception of the pain, 
or entire insensibility to it. The one proced- 
ure is moral; the other, the reverse, because 
based on falsehood. The principle that ^^ be- 
lief in pain explains pain '' is daily exploited 
by Christian Science doctors ; ^^ the penalty 
53 



Hypnotism in Culture 

for believing in the reality of sickness is 
sictness." Headache, toothache, neuralgias, 
etc., are treated by attempting to persuade 
the patient that physical suffering is an il- 
lusion 3 there is no such thing. " Tumors, 
ulcers, inflammation, pain, deformed spines," 
writes Mrs. Eddy, '^ are all dream shadows " ; 
there is no reality about them. Metaphysical 
treatment on this basis is daily pushed to 
the verge of brutality by ignorant and ir- 
responsible practitioners of this sect. 

The relation of auto-suggestion to Chris- 
tian Science cures may be illustrated in cer- 
tain statements of Mrs. Eddy's : 

I. ^' Cures were produced in primitive 
Christian times by faith." Whereas this is 
not true — the cures being the result of su- 
pernatural power, and faith being the con- 
dition of cure, the fee demanded by the 
Great Physician, not the cause — recourse to 
the argument makes plain her position. 
54 



Christian Science 

II. " Convince a person that matter can- 
not take coldj and he will not." How is this 
to be accomplished except by deceiving his 
subliminal self with the monstrous false- 
hood, and then calling into active control 
the subliminal self so hoodwinked. An ob- 
jective self blessed with common-sense could 
never be '^ convinced " of such balderdash. 
So there is no other conceivable way of 
^^ proving to invalids/' in the face of the con- 
spicuous effect of climatic conditions on 
health and disease, ^^ that they can be healthy 
in all climates/' except by downright lying 
to the subliminal self, through auto-sugges- 
tion, on the part of a tricked imbecile objec- 
tive self. The result of such cozenage is evi- 
denced in the premature death of tuberculous 
stay-at-homes, of patients with Bright's dis- 
ease retained in cold wet climates, of sufferers 
from bronchial catarrh denied the palliative 
effects of moist and warm climates. 
55 



Hypnotism in Culture 

But especially in the following, from 
Science and Health, do the long ears of 
the ass, Fad, crop out through the lion skin 
of science. The treatment of the Christian 
Scientist is to ^' efface the images of disease 
from the mind hy keeping distinctly in 
thought the fact that man is the offspring of 
soul, not hody ; is spirit, not material." Such 
premeditated keeping in objective thought 
soon impresses (on simple scientific princi- 
ples) the self that is automatic with a belief 
in Mrs. Eddy's fallacy. The faddists, how- 
ever, who are bewitched with " Eddyism " 
reject examination by inductive methods, 
and insist on changing the name of an in- 
strumentality known to scientific men at 
least as early as 500 b.c. from Pythagorean 
^' influence," mesmerism, animal magnetism, 
odylism, artificial somnambulism, or neuro- 
hypnotism, to Christian Science. On pre- 
cisely the same principle, reading her book, 
56 



Christian Science 

Science and Health, is, as Mrs. Eddy de- 
clares, ^^ curing thousands." 

This work has been found a most efficient 
stimulator of auto-suggestion by ignorant 
and inferior minds, Avho imagine that its 
learned nonsense, which they cannot under- 
stand, must for that very reason be replete 
with meaning — and whose superstitious in- 
tellects attach the same virtue to its psycho- 
therapeutic formulae as the Southern negroes 
believe to reside in the conjurations of their 
voodoos and fetich-doctors. The patient's 
credulous objective intellect is first impreg- 
nated with faith in the Christian Science sys- 
tem of furnishing relief; it then suggests 
the desired relief to the secondary conscious- 
ness, which, through its regulation of the 
ordinary processes of digestion, absorption, 
elimination, circulation, and innervation, 
controls functional disturbances. There is 
thus no difference between the philosophy of 
57 



Hypnotism in Culture 

the cure effected by the suggestionist and that 
of the Christian Scientist. The rose by an- 
other designation would seem to breathe a 
sweeter smell. 

The only way in which the hopelessly 
creed-bound professors of Christian Science 
can be cured of their mania — for it is a true 
mania, and hence is not approachable by ar- 
gument — is by counter-treatment through re- 
putable hypnotic channels — disillusionment 
of the deluded subliminal self by radical de- 
structive treatment. 

The claim of Mrs. Eddy to credit for " the 
healing of incurable diseases " is prepos- 
terous, and argues dementia senilis or a de- 
liberate intention to bait gudgeons. 

An organic disease is one in which there 
is a structural change in the part affected, an 
anatomical alteration. Mrs. Eddy declares 
that she has cured such diseases ^^ as readily 
as purely functional diseases," and with no 
58 



Christian Science 

means but mind. This presumptuous claim 
is equivalent to a demand on the public for 
faith in her power to work miracles, to re- 
place a honeycombed kidney, or fill a cavity 
in the lungs with healthy pulmonary tissue — 
achievements somewhat beyond the power of 
metaphysical clowns and marvel-mongers. 

Auto and post-hypnotic suggestion are util- 
ized by the reputable practitioner always 
with reference to what is possible and prac- 
ticable, as well as to w^hat is desirable. It 
is unchristian, antichristian, criminal, to 
employ either as an agent for deceiving the 
credulous, for riveting their faith to impos- 
sibilities in the line of cure through persua- 
sion of the subconscious self that miracles are 
not out of date. This role every Christian 
Science healer stands prepared to play with 
the most unprincipled effrontery; whereas 
no conscientious physician pledges the impos- 
sible to any patient in the hope of tempo- 
59 



Hypnotism in Culture 

rarily elevating his physical or mental condi- 
tion, with a view to obscuring an inevitable 
termination. To do so would be immoral. 
It is plainly the duty of the suggestionist to 
represent to the sufferer from organic disease 
the benefits that may reasonably be expected 
from the application of hypno-science, viz., 
the control of nervous symptoms through 
redistribution of nerve energy by the induc- 
tion of outflowing currents strong, sustained, 
continuous, and evenly disposed over the 
whole body ;* the establishment of functional 
harmony and the habit of sleep; and the in- 
tensification of the normal powers of endur- 
ance and resignation, the placing, of the mind 
in an optimistic attitude — but no miraculous 



* In the calm of hypnosis, at the command of the 
operator, all nervous symptoms subside; the heart 
stops its tumultuous beat; the pulse falls from 120 
to 70; the respiration becomes slow, regular, and 
breezy; and the sinking feeling about the praecordia 
Is put to flight. 

60 



Christian Science 

cure. The responsibility of accepting or de- 
clining treatment by suggestion, as thus ex- 
plained, must rest with the patient. 

What is popularly known as ^^ absent treat- 
ment " is nothing but suggestion. A healer 
advertises; a would-be patient responds, and 
pays the required fee. She is notified that 
at certain hours the healer will treat her. 
She is foolish enough to believe it, and her 
faith, or auto-suggestion, in case she is suffer- 
ing from a functional trouble, brings her re- 
lief on purely philosophical principles. She 
really does have treatment, and may better by 
it permanently; but she does the work her- 
self, and, save as he appeals to her credulity, 
the healer has nothing whatever to do with 
the cure. 



AUTO-SUGGESTION AND 
FAITH 



AUTO-SUGGESTION AND 
FAITH 

FAITH without works is dead. So faith 
•unfounded on rational conviction is 
dead also — and certainly unacceptable to the 
Almighty from the stand-point of the Bible. 
Why does an intelligent adult believe in the 
cardinal doctrines of Christianity ? Because 
he has examined the evidence pro as well as 
con, and satisfied himself that they are true ; 
because he has encountered unimpeachable 
testimony regarding the greatest of all mir- 
acles, and accepts God's plan of salvation 
through the incarnation and sacrifice of Jesus 
Christ. He has laid hold of this both ob- 
jectively and subjectively — with both person- 
65 



Hypnotism in Culture 

alities. His automatic as well as his con- 
scious life conforms to the requirements of 
Christianity. His automatic self has of 
course been impressed, but on a distinctly 
different principle from similar impression 
by a belief in the supernatural without suffi- 
cient evidence — a belief in the efficacy of 
faith cures, divine healing, vitapathy, oste- 
opathy, etc., which is necessarily unsupported 
by reason. The one impression is made by 
a religion that worships ; the other by a super- 
stition that blasphemes. The one represents 
the incoming of God into the soul of man; 
the other heralds a triumph for what has been 
called " Swarmism," or collective suggesti- 
bility, whereby a mass of inferior minds are 
dazzled, and through suggestion is begotten an 
enthusiastic approval of the freaks, fads, and 
follies of the day. 

In the one case there is a conspicuous dis- 
position to be deceived and carried away by 
66 



Auto-Suggestion and Faith 

theories inconsistent with reason and natural 
law; and a frivolous half -balanced objective 
intellect assents to the preposterous claims 
of every new ^' ism '' that is agitated. In 
the other, faith is crystallized as the result of 
deliberate investigation and soul-satisfying 
subjective experience. The primary and 
the secondary consciousness of a consistent 
Christian are in perfect harmony; the pri- 
mary and the secondary consciousness of a de- 
ceived enthusiast are really in antagonism 
because the subliminal self has been bent 
away from its normal standard of right 
apprehension and constrained to accept, for 
the time being, the alluring declarations 
of a persistent, though weaker, objective 
self. 

The faith that God demands of man is the 
assent of his reason to truths credited upon 
the divine word as contained in the Script- 
ures ; to quote Matthew Arnold, it is " the 
67 



Hypnotism in Culture 

being able to cleave to a power of goodness 
appealing to our higher and real self, not 
to our lower and apparent self." This high- 
er subliminal self is gifted with spiritual 
perception, as well as with supranormal 
mental powers; but those whose lower and 
apparent selfs, speaking through an animal 
organism and swayed by unworthy motives, 
suggest repeatedly to their better selfs in 
the line of their carnal desires, at length 
benumb the whole receptivity to spiritual im- 
pression, and thus grieve the Holy Ghost. 
The grace daily offered is daily rejected, until 
the power to receive it is destroyed. It ill 
becomes finite beings to judge of the out- 
come; but certainly the future development 
of such souls must be in the line of their 
earthly choice, unless God in His goodness 
shall vouchsafe to break the shackles of per- 
verted suggestion in the world of purely 
spiritual life. " In the most pessimistic 
68 



Auto-Suggestion and Faith 

forecasts we make for humanity there is al- 
ways this underprotest of hope." 

The writer is not to be understood as in- 
tending to substitute auto-suggestion for the 
grace of God, or for enlightened faith in 
God. Yet in the providence of the Almighty 
suggestion is made practicable by His amal- 
gamation of a double consciousness in each 
individual mind, and it is psychologically 
possible that suggestion is the means through 
which God, as well as human selfs and spir- 
itual intelligences, communicates directly 
with the subliminal man. And who will 
deny that it is by the quality and quantity 
of such communication with the Infinite that 
human souls are distinguished from one an- 
other? Cultivation of suggestibility to the 
influence of God is thus cultivation of in- 
dividuality. Auto-suggestion is not itself the 
saving grace, as Christian Scientists make it 
under another name. It is but the channel 

69 



Hypnotism in Culture 

God has provided for the conveyance of sus- 
taining grace, the vehicle for the transmis- 
sion of faith to the self that spiritually per- 
ceives, and intuitively apprehends without 
recourse to logical procedures. 



MORAL REFORM EFFECTED 
BY HYPNOTISM IN CON- 
TRAST WITH CONVERSION 
INVOLVING MORAL REFORM. 
THE ETHICAL VICTORY 



MORAL REFORM EFFECTED 
BY HYPNOTISM IN CON- 
TRAST WITH CONVERSION 
INVOLVING MORAL REFORM. 
THE ETHICAL VICTORY 

IT is argued by moralists that there is no 
ethical victory on the part of the patient 
who abandons an evil habit under the in- 
fluence of hypnotic suggestion; and thought- 
ful persons have ventured to inquire, What 
is the difference between a moral reform 
effected through hypnotism and a conversion 
to Christianity involving a moral reform ? 

An ethical victory in the abstract is 
achieved only when a person deliberately 
overcomes sin, or resists temptation, without 
73 



Hypnotism in Culture 

God's help and without suggestion through 
the subliminal self, but solely by the deter- 
mined effort of a consciously active will stim- 
ulated by considerations of propriety, of 
physical safety, or of worldly expediency. 
In cases where the Holy Spirit empowers a 
man to resist temptation or to perform a 
meritorious act, there is certainly no abstract 
ethical victory; for the energizing agent is 
not the objective self concerned acting as its 
own Saviour, but an outside self, even the 
Spirit of God. Christians openly credit God 
with aid, because they apprehend their own 
insufficiency and realize the spiritual acces- 
sions to their strength of soul. The conceit 
involved in a claim to personal moral triumph 
would be inconsistent with their profession, 
for it would equivalent subtraction from the 
functions of the Holy Ghost. The very 
Christ contended that in His human nature 
He did nothing of Himself. The victory of 
74 



The Ethical Victory 

Job — which culminated in that cry of the 
soul, " Though He slay me, yet will I trust 
in Him " — was an abstract moral victory of 
the highest order, achieved by the godlike in 
the man, without specially conferred grace. 
Both in hypnotic reforms and the reforms 
accompanying conversion, petition is made for 
outside aid and action is taken under out- 
side influence. In each case the ethical vic- 
tory consists in the cumulative desire for 
betterment ; and in each case recourse is had, 
under the stimulus of such desire, to a strong- 
er and richer personality. But the results 
consequent upon an influencing of a sublim- 
inal self by a human being and an influenc- 
ing of a subliminal self by the Spirit of God 
differ vastly in degree — even by how much 
the Spirit of God is superior in purity, love, 
discrimination, and power, to the spirit of 
man. Apprehension of a depraved moral 
constitution, of delight in the law of God but 
75 



Hypnotism in Culture 

of slavery to that other law in the members 
that wars against the law of mind; earnest 
wish for reform when the state is one of moral 
disease or moral mania — must always lead a 
believer to sue for grace. But something 
more than prayer is needed. In the treat- 
ment of physical ailments, God helps those 
who help themselves, who avail themselves of 
the services of doctors and nurses and of 
the agency of appropriate medicines. So 
in dealing with moral disease, where 
irresistible impulses drive unfortunates to 
the commission of crime or steep them 
in health - destroying vices, it were irrev- 
erent to trust to prayer alone, hoping for 
some special interposition of Providence in 
behalf of the moral leper. The psychic 
treatment which science has approved — and 
which is just as much a means, in God's 
providence, as are drugs for preventing, cur- 
ing, or alleviating physical disease — should be 
76 



The Ethical Victory 

applied, viz., judicious hypnotic suggestion, 
in the hope of re-establishing control by ap- 
peal to the subliminal self. There may not 
be so great an ethical victory in the semi- 
automatic performance of meritorious acts 
suggested by a hypnotist as is implied in a 
conscious endeavor to do right with the help of 
God ; but I most unqualifiedly assert that sug- 
gestive treatment of this kind paves the way 
for the achievement of future ethical victo- 
ries which, humanly speaking, would other- 
wise be impossible. And no one will deny 
that society is the gainer, whatever the eth- 
ical situation may be. 

Suggestion is to be regarded only as a 
means whereby the soul may be reached, and 
as nothing more. That the Holy Spirit util- 
izes the automatic self to effect His regenera- 
tive work, who will venture to deny ? That 
a conscientious physician is justified in em- 
ploying the same means to alleviate mental 
n 



Hypnotism in Culture 

and physical distress, smooth the pathway to 
the grave, or remove moral taints from the 
nature — and that he can do so without shat- 
tering a patient's faith in the Christian relig- 
ion or interfering in the least with the abil- 
ity to achieve moral victories — ^no person 
blessed with a modicum of common-sense 
would for a moment question. 

The writer is naturally not in accord with 
those visionaries who imagine they see in im- 
pression of the subliminal self an explanation 
of all spiritual phenomena, even of the Bibli- 
cal miracles, and who hope for a realization 
of their wish to rid the world of a necessity 
for Jesus Christ by proclaiming every sub- 
liminal self its own Saviour. The miracles 
of Jesus were not hypnotic miracles because 
they involved the absolute cure of organic 
diseases and defects. Christ may have util- 
ized the subliminal self to effect character 
change, as the Comforter He has sent among 
78 



The Ethical Victory 

us may do to-day. But He touched the phys- 
ical organism immediately when He cleansed 
the leper, opened the eyes of the congenitally 
blind, restored power to the palsied frame, 
and animated dead protoplasm with a living 
psyche^ reincarnating the disembodied spirit 
in its former tenement. Neither patient nor 
audience was the dupe of hypnotic sugges- 
tion, as unbelievers contend. The argument 
that astute Pharisees, ever on the alert for 
damning evidence and notoriously so baffled 
as to ascribe the miracles of Christ to the 
power of Satan, were deceived by a mesmer- 
ist — that the whole Koman world was hypno- 
tized by a Galilean carpenter and a handful 
of fishermen — that Palestine, under the spell 
of suggestion, testified so irrefutably to the 
death and resurrection of the Redeemer that 
these two events stand proved not for an age, 
but for all time — is too childish to merit seri- 
ous notice. The theory that the recipients 
79 



Hypnotism in Culture 

of Christ's favor were, after the Christian 
Science method, juggled into a belief that 
thej were not sufferers, and that such a ruse 
was instantly followed by cure, is based upon 
a blasphemous construction of the mission 
of Jesus but a degree less reprehensible than 
the sin of those Jews who trumpeted the un- 
pardonable words, "' He casteth out devils 
through Beelzebub." 



SUGGESTION AND RESPON- 
SIBILITY 



SUGGESTION AND RESPON- 
SIBILITY 

HEREDITY and environment make us 
what we are. Heredity represents 
a mass of potent suggestion transmitted 
from ancestors through the medium of " he- 
redity - carriers," called germ - plasms, that 
unite to form the human embryo. What is 
called ante-natal impression is but suggestion 
to the forming self by the physical mother. 
While environment may be explained as sug- 
gestion to the formed maturing and educa- 
ting self by surrounding influences like com- 
panionship and instruction. 

It is generally understood that physical 
characteristics, predisposition to disease, men- 
tal, moral, and spiritual attributes, insanity, 
83 



Hypnotism in Culture 

and criminal tendencies, are heritable. It 
may not be so widely known that excess in 
the use of alcohol and narcotic drugs induces 
in parents abnormal nervous states that are 
the direct cause of feeble-minded as well as 
feeble-bodied, of epileptic, idiotic, and even 
criminal children, the untoward tendencies 
being perpetuated under natural laws to the 
third and fourth generation. Where lodges 
the responsibility for viciousness, profligacy, 
or crime in the grandchild of a drunkard ? 
And who would hold that the offspring of an 
inebriate mother, saturated with alcohol be- 
fore their birth, are in any way personally 
responsible for the nervous or moral diseases 
that come into the world with them and cling 
to them through life ? Fortunately, in all 
these cases, there is a strong current of re- 
version setting toward the normal types and 
higher standards of remoter ancestors (ata- 
vism) ; and this is the reason why discreet 
84 



Suggestion and Responsibility 

suggestion is so puissant an agent to oblique 
from inherited or acquired weakness or sin, 
and throw into relief the noble traits that 
slumber in every character. 

It has been contended that in view of the 
inheritance of multiform attributes, human 
beings of the present age have little claim to 
originality. With equal force it may be ar- 
gued that for many of our acts we are not 
morally responsible. The romance, Elsie 
Venner, was written by Dr. Holmes to il- 
lustrate this point. The real aim of the 
story, he says in the preface, was ^^ to test 
the doctrine of original sin, of inherited 
moral responsibility for other people's mis- 
behavior. Was Elsie Venner, poisoned by 
the venom of a crotalus before she was born, 
morally responsible for the volitional aber- 
rations which, translated into acts, become 
what is known as sin, and, it may be, what is 
punished as crime ?" How far is a child re- 
85 



Hypnotism in Culture 

sponsible for inherited tendencies which he 
knows nothing about and cannot prevent 
from acting? I can but believe, with the 
gifted author of this weird story, that all the 
unfortunate heirs of evil suggestion, the chil- 
dren who are morally poisoned before they 
see the light and act in accordance with natal 
tendency, are proper objects of divine pity 
rather than of divine wrath. To me they 
appeal with an unwonted interest.* It is 

* There need be no Elsie Venners, strictly such, 
in these days, because the effects of ante-natal shocks 
are removable by suggestion. The influence of ma- 
ternal impressions upon the nature of an expected 
child, if not perfectly understood, is universally ad- 
mitted. The dominant ideas, delusions, and impera- 
tive fears of prospective mothers that menace the 
moral or mental health of selfs that are yet unborn 
should be eradicated without delay by the most care- 
ful treatment. Conversely, it is possible through the 
same instrumentality to stimulate the intellectual 
germs, shape the moral propensities, and so deter- 
mine the ethical and mental destiny, as vrell as the 
mere physical constitution, of the child awaiting 
birth. Experiments are now making by the author 
86 



Suggestion and Responsibility 

believed that a better acquaintance with the 
principles of heredity, the hoped-for outcome 
of investigations now making, must materi- 
ally modify existing systems of education, 
punishment, and reform, and recognize sug- 
gestive therapeutics at its true worth as an 
instrumentality for betterment. 

Inherited suggestion measurably relieves 
from personal responsibility for acts auto- 
matically committed in the line of the sug- 
gestion. This is distinctly the teaching of 
St. Paul, in Komans VII. : " For the good 
which I would, I do not ; but the evil which 
I would not, that I practise. ISTow, if I do 
what I neither approve nor wish to do, I 
(that is, my real self or spiritual part) am 
in no sense doing it — but the indwelling 

of this volume having in view intra-uterine inspira- 
tion by suggestion to the enceinte woman. The pos- 
sibilities of physically, rationally, and spiritually ele- 
vating the human race through this channel become 
infinite. 

87 



Hypnotism in Culture 

inlierited tendency to deviation from the di- 
vine lav7 is the accountable factor in my 
wrongdoing." Kleptomaniacs in lucid mo- 
ments deplore their weakness and explain 
their position almost in the words of Paul. 
The two selfs that contended for the control 
of Araspes in Xenophon's historical novel, 
Tlie Cyropaedia, are paralleled by the two 
selfs of the apostle, viz., the self of spirit and 
the self of flesh — the one impelled by desires, 
motives, and interests diametrically oppo- 
site to those of the other. And these two selfs 
of Paul correspond to our subjective or sub- 
liminal personality, the pure pneuma which 
is swayed by moral impulses and intuitive- 
ly resists deflection from the perpendicular 
of truth, and the susceptible, continuously 
tempted, peccable objective personality with 
its ingeniously contrived excuses for gratify- 
ing the sinful desires of the flesh. Assured- 
Iv, the Paul of Komans discerned the du- 



Suggestion and Responsibility 

plex personality, bore witness to the battle of 
the selfs, and questioned the doctrine, not of 
inherited propensity to sin, but of inherited 
responsibility for that sin. 

On this same principle, immoral attitudes 
inspired by the constant suggestion of wicked 
or misguided parents certainly do not find 
place in the category of punishable sins. The 
mother who forever worries, grieves, fears, 
scolds, raves, fattens,„on scandal, must induce 
depraved states in the minds of the children 
growing up about her through the potency 
of incessant suggestion. They, too, develop 
into selfish, jealous, narrow, uncharitable 
beings because their objective intellects have 
through the formative years been impressed 
in these various lines, and have in turn sug- 
gested to their several subliminal selfs false 
views of life which never dissolve into the 
true. How far an absolutely just Judge 
will hold such souls responsible for their mis- 
89 



Hypnotism in Culture 

taken opinions; for their prejudices, aver- 
sions, and hates; for their predilections and 
their loves — is surely a legitimate question 
for discussion. The principle involved is 
entirely distinct from that which obtains in 
deliberate suggestion to matured minds, 
where the obligation to examine both sides 
of a presented case is binding, and the re- 
sponsibility of deciding in accordance with 
the evidence is fixed and recognized. Under 
such circumstances, the soul is held account- 
able for wilfully or thoughtlessly entertain- 
ing the compromising suggestion. Duty im- 
plies not only doing what is right, but finding 
out what is right in order to do it. 

Although the Apostle implied in his use 
of the Greek word aixapria an inherited 
tendency to sin, he nowhere intimated that 
sane adults endowed with powers of examina- 
tion and judgment are not accountable for 
their sins. But he sought to show men that 
90 



Suggestion and Responsibility 

the sins of the objective self are, at the in- 
stigation of passion and lust, committed in 
direct opposition to the holy instincts of 
the subjective self, top ecro) dv6po}7rovj the in- 
ward man; and thus he was the first to 
exhort human beings to put the subliminal 
self in control — the superior part of their 
nature which delights in the law of God above 
the carnal part Avhich serves the power of sin. 
And this is accomplished by submitting the 
subliminal personality, through consent of 
the self -convicted sin-serving " flesh " (ttj Be 
aapKl), to impression by the grace of God. 
The impulse to right-doing thus imparted is 
obeyed by the conscious man who, in his 
weakness and despair, prayed passionately 
for it in his objective life. Such is the in- 
terpretation psychology would place upon the 
philosophy of the Apostle Paul. 

What has been said of the parent holds 
true of the teacher, who stands in the next 
91 



Hypnotism in Culture 

nearest relation to the developing child. 
School as well as home suggestion deter- 
mines character. The natural teacher 
wields a hypnotic influence; and when 
the automatic self of a pupil is once 
under his control and controls in turn 
the thoughts and acts of its own objective 
child self — where lies the responsibility for 
these thoughts and acts ? The greatest edu- 
cators contend to-day, as they have always 
contended, that the youngest pupils should be 
under the influence of the most experienced 
and most cultured teachers — men and wom- 
en of beautiful character, of inflexible ad- 
herence to Christian principle, calm, sincere, 
strong, dead to all selfish interests, and pro- 
foundly impressed with the gravity of the 
work they have taken in hand. Instead of 
this type of instructor, thoughtless untrained 
grammar-lads and conceited girl-graduates 
are intrusted with the most solemn of duties 
92 



Suggestion and Responsibility 

— that of giving the earliest and most impor- 
tant bent to youthful souls. 

It is evident that between suggestion as 
involved in heredity and suggestion as im- 
plied in environment, a large mass of what 
is called responsibility — the state of being 
answerable or accountable for deliberate 
thoughts, words, and actions — is obliterated. 



MORAL USE OF HYPNOTISM. 
SUGGESTION IN THE TREAT- 
MENT OF THE CIGARETTE 
HABIT 



MORAL USE OF HYPNOTISM. 
SUGGESTION IN THE TREAT- 
MENT OF THE CIGARETTE 
HABIT 

OUT of the general interest centering 
of late years in the results of psy- 
chological research has recently sprung a spe- 
cial and absorbing concern in hypnotism, 
particularly with reference to its use as a 
moralizing agent. It was in the hope of es- 
tablishing an inductive principle as regards 
the applicability of suggestive therapeutics 
to the eradication of criminal traits, heredi- 
tary and acquired, that the writer began, dur- 
ing the winter of 1899, a series of experi- 
ments in the Borough of Manhattan. The 
G 97 



Hypnotism in Culture 

cases of moral import successfully treated by 
suggestion may be classified under the follow- 
ing heads : — 

Cigarette Addiction. 

Inebriety and Morphinomania. 

Kleptomania and Hopeless Dishonesty. 

Sexual Perversions 

Wilfulness, Disobedience, and Habitual 
Falsehood in Children. 

Intellectual Disequilibration and Moral 
Ansesthesia. 

The value of post-hypnotic and auto-sug- 
gestion for the cure of crime and for the cor- 
rection of certain phases of perverted men- 
tality no longer admits of question. 

In one of the ]^ew York lodging-houses for 
boys, the only institution of the kind to which 
the writer was accorded access, a number of 
intelligent young fellows, representing the 



The Cigarette Habit 

newsboy, bootblack, and errand-boy class, 
were found desirous of being freed from 
practices prejudicial to their physical and 
moral health. The cases there encountered 
included cigarette addiction, kleptomania, 
moral perversion, and low or misdirected 
intelligence. The method pursued with cig- 
arette-smokers, some of whom admitted the 
smoking of forty to fifty cigarettes a day and 
exhibited many symptoms of nicotine poison- 
ing, was to deprive them gradually of the 
stimulant.* The suggestion was given to 



* If a stimulant like tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, or 
morphia, be removed suddenly by a hypnotic sug- 
gestion to the effect that it is not needed and will no 
longer be resorted to, the same serious depression is 
likely to follow discontinuance of its use as is ob- 
servable in objective treatment. In the case of pa- 
tients stimulating both with morphia and cocaine, it 
is my practice to take the cocaine away first, and 
then, after the patient has been gradually deprived of 
this drug, to begin on the morphia. The tendency to 
go beyond the requirements of a suggestion must also 
be borne in mind in the case of patients depending on 



Hypnotism in Culture 

smoke fewer cigarettes each day of the en- 
suing week, until the number was finally re- 
duced to one after each meal. At the second 
hypnotism the suggestion was, You are done 
with cigarettes and have no further use for 
tobacco; it will nauseate you, keep up your 
nervous symptoms, increase the irregular ac- 
tion of your heart, continue to irritate your 
throat, and aggravate the eye trouble it has 
induced. It will interfere with your success 
in life. This repeated three times. The re- 
wards of honesty, moderation, and devotion 
to employers' interests were then pictured, 
and the patient was told to wake up at a 

dangerous stimulants. And this tendency is further 
complicated by a propensity to substitute another 
stimulant for the one withdrawn. If tobacco be in- 
terdicted, the patient, for instance, may take to 
drink : if the use of one kind of alcoholic stimulant 
be checked, recourse is likely to be had to another. 
The prohibition of whiskey may lead to the intem- 
perate use of beer ; of cigarettes, to the adoption 
of the pipe; of morphia, to alcoholic excesses, 

loo 



The Cigarette Habit 

designated time, feeling encouraged, ambi- 
tious, and happy. These suggestions are al- 
ways fulfilled; a disgust for tobacco is pro- 
duced, sometimes so strong that after the 
first treatment the patient will almost en- 
tirely forego its use. 

The following cases are typical : 
Erank W. Black, aged twenty, who had 
smoked for eight years, and whose daily aver- 
age had reached fifty cigarettes, reported to 
me on the 19th of March, in a markedly 
nervous condition, and with the respiratory 
passages inflamed by the inhalation of tobac- 
co smoke. He was hypnotized and the sug- 
gestion given to him not to smoke more than 
four cigarettes a day, and that he would 
overcome the habit entirely. He came to 
my office on the 22d of March with the fol- 
lowing report : On the night of the 19th (he 
is a night watchman) he smoked five ciga- 
rettes and a pipe three times; on Monday 

lOI 



Hypnotism in Culture 

night, a pipe twice and no cigarettes; on 
Tuesday night, a pipe twice, with no desire 
for cigarettes up to 9.30 on Wednesday morn- 
ing. He was then hypnotized again and 
told to continue smoking two pipes for three 
nights, and on the fourth night to be content 
with one, and assured that he would entirely 
lose his taste for tobacco in two weeks. 

The second case, Andrew Keane, aged eigh- 
teen, is one of the most interesting of all. 
He was a nervous wreck from cigarette addic- 
tion — suffering from tobacco heart, fugitive 
pains, inactive liver, mental torpor. He had 
persistently tried to break off the habit, but 
without success. Failed to hypnotize on 
March 19th and 26th. Ordered him to re- 
port at my office on Tuesday, April 18th, 
and after an hour's trial succeeded in pro- 
ducing artificial somnambulism. The sug- 
gestion was given to him to reduce the num- 
ber of cigarettes gradually from thirty a day^ 

I02 



The Cigarette Habit 

his average when not flush of money, and to 
come back a week later. This the patient 
did, having smoked only four cigarettes dur- 
ing the whole week following hypnotism. 
On April 25th he was again hypnotized and 
told very emphatically that he had given up 
smoking and had no further use for tobacco — 
that cigarette smoking would nauseate him, 
keep up the irregular action of his heart, 
destroy his nervous equilibrium, and inter- 
fere with his business prospects. The re- 
ward of abandoning the habit was then pict- 
ured to him — restored health, the securing 
of a position in which he would win the re- 
spect of his employer by honesty and faith- 
fulness, business success, and social rise. 
He was told to awaken with a feeling of en- 
couragement and manly self - dependence, 
which he did. On May 4th he came to my 
office and told me he had not smoked once in 
the interval, nor felt the slightest inclination 
103 



Hypnotism in Culture 

to do so. His general health was good, the 
rhythm of his heart perfect, his skin clear of 
an erythematous eruption that covered his 
body before treatment. He was hypnotized 
again, the general suggestions were repeated, 
and he was discharged. 

On the 4th of June last, a young man of 
German parentage, Schmidt by name, came 
to my office suffering from what his famliy 
called tahakvergiftung , or nicotine poison- 
ing. Some days he averaged as many as 
three packs of cigarettes (60), inhaling the 
smoke, and thus inflaming the respiratory 
passages. He exhibited the characteristic 
trembling of the fingers and hands, and his 
face was covered with a typical acne. The 
tobacco eye, involving a more or less pro- 
nounced atrophy of the optic nerve (tobacco 
amaurosis — dimness of vision) not infre- 
quently met with in cigarette addiction, was 
not marked in this case. There was no oc- 
104 



The Cigarette Habit 

cupation neurosis like telegrapher^s cramp, 
and the abuse of tlie narcotic had not led to 
the usual excessive indulgence in alcoholic 
stimulants which so perfectly counteract the 
depressing effects of nicotine. Both knee 
reflexes were absent — a somewhat significant 
symptom, as it is well known that the abuse 
of tobacco interferes with nervous nutrition, 
and hence is taken into account by neurol- 
ogists as an important factor among the 
causes of tabes dorsalis, or chronic degenera- 
tion of the spinal cord. This young man 
had exhausted all the ordinary methods of 
treatment, had tried in vain the various ad- 
vertised cures, and was proof against the 
patiently directed influence of a devoted 
mother and sister. 

Schmidt was hypnotized and the suggestion 

was given that he would not smoke more than 

three cigarettes a day until he saw me again ; 

that cigarettes would nauseate him, ruin his 

105 



Hypnotism in Culture 

health, and interfere with his success in busi- 
ness. The constructive treatment consisted 
in picturing fidelity to his employer's inter- 
ests, honesty and energy in his service, with 
their accompanying rewards, viz., the appro- 
bation of his own conscience and objective 
recognition of his merit by successive pro- 
motions. The exact words, which were 
spoken slowly, earnestly, and feelingly, were 
as follows : 

" You are about done with tobacco ; you 
are through with the poison. Before long 
you will stop smoking cigarettes entirely. 
From now until you see me again you are 
not going to smoke more than three cigarettes 
a day; you — are — not — going — to — smoke — 
more — than — three — cigarettes — a — day. 
You hear me, from now until you see me 
again you — are — not — going— to — smoke — 
more — than — three — cigarettes — a — day. 
You simply cannot smoke more than three 
io6 



The Cigarette Habit 

cigarettes a day. They will hurt you if you 
do. They will make you sick. They will 
nauseate you. You — simply — cannot — 
smoke — more — than — three — cigarettes — a 
-day." 

For three minutes I spoke impressively in 
this strain; then, after a pause, I gave the 
constructive treatment as outlined on page 
106. 

A very much surprised and a very happy 
youth was Martin Schmidt on that Sunday. 
Tor the first time in six years he had no de- 
sire to smoke a cigarette. According to his 
own account, he looked forward with pleasure 
to going to work on Monday, ^ew interests 
opened before him. He felt a desire to excel, 
to display greater energy. He was like a 
new man. 

On June 6th, Schmidt reported at my office 
again, and stated that he had not smoked 
any cigarettes since he had been hypnotized, 
107 



Hypnotism in Culture 

nor felt any desire to do so. He further 
spoke of taking an unwonted interest in his 
work. The treatment was repeated. He 
was told emphatically that he had no further 
use for tobacco, that he could not smoke cig- 
arettes any more, and never would want to. 
And the same outlet for mental energy was 
sought in his business opportunities. 

The following day he tried to smoke mere- 
ly to see if the craving was gone. A few 
puffs made him faint. He had never known 
nausea so severe. The cure was complete. 
To quote his own words : " From then on 
even the thought of smoking made me feel 
sick. This seemed strange, and on Wednes- 
day evening after tea I determined to try 
my best to smoke a cigarette, just to see if I 
could do it. A few puffs satisfied me that 
I was cured. I felt deathly sick ; I could not 
go on." 

Young cigarette smokers, as a rule, keep 
io8 



The Cigarette Habit 

within the limit of my allowance, and often, 
as in Schmidt's case, cease to smoke after a 
single treatment. Hypnotic suggestion is 
thus a far more satisfactory method of deal- 
ing with this vice, and infinitely more prompt 
in its action, than any tobacco antidote tab- 
lets, coca-bola, tobacco nervine, etc. 

Cigarette smoking is more injurious than 
the use of tobacco in any other form, first, be- 
cause of the inferior quality of the tobacco 
usually employed ; and secondly, because the 
smoke is inhaled, thus producing the most de- 
pressing effects. The whole system is tobac- 
conized, the organs and tissues of the body 
smelling of tobacco smoke. Boys who begin 
the use of cigarettes at ^ve or six years of age, 
as many do, break down during the critical 
period of puberty. Boys who contract the 
habit later in their youth, and defy the risks 
of puberty by going to the usual extremes in 
the abuse of cigarette smoking, are likely to 
109 



Hypnotism in Culture 

become nervous bankrupts before they are 
twenty-one. Indeed, excess in the use of to- 
bacco is regarded as a frequent cause of 
^^ Americanitis/' or nervous prostration. 

There are conditions observable in some 
cigarette smokers that would not seem to be 
legitimately referable to nicotine poisoning — 
a lessening or complete loss of moral sensi- 
bility, with a conspicuous tendency to false- 
hood and theft, which suggest opium effects. 
Although cigarettes have been analyzed sev- 
eral times by different chemists of reputation 
and responsibility. Professor Chandler in- 
cluded, only one analyst has ever reported 
opium or morphine in a cigarette. If Dr. 
Chandler be correct in his opinion that '' the 
worst thing in cigarettes is tobacco,'' then we 
must look to nicotine in explanation of much 
of the moral astigmatism prevalent among 
American boys and young men. 

A recent patient, a broker by profession, af- 



The Cigarette Habit 

forded in the history of his treatment a very 
instructive illustration of the statement made 
on page 27, that the mind of the hypnotic 
affects post-hypnotically the line of least re- 
sistance. Cigarette smoking persisted in for 
years had induced pronounced nervousness, 
insomnia, and bronchial irritation. In re- 
sponse to the first suggestions, this patient 
had dropped from twenty - five cigarettes 
a day to five, but in the excitement of a 
panic had risen to eight and subsequently to 
fifteen. Two weeks after the second treat- 
ment he reported this fact at my ofiice, but 
supplemented his report, apparently discour- 
aging, with the statement that he was per- 
fectly well, had no cough or restlessness, and 
enjoyed refreshing sleep at night. What he 
had really consulted me for was accom- 
plished, and yet he had kept up the cigar- 
ettes. He asked an explanation ; it was this : 
The suggestions to discontinue smoking were 



Hypnotism in Culture 

based destructively on the fear thought of a 
distinct relationship between the physical con- 
ditions and the use of cigarettes. But the 
subliminal mind found it easier to render 
him immune from the effects of cigarette 
smoking than to interdict the smoking, and 
hence sent out its decree of spontaneous pro- 
tection of the nerve-centres from the ordinary 
effects of the nicotine. In the subsequent 
treatment all argument with the subliminal 
mind will be dispensed with, and the craving 
directly assailed. 



DIPSOMANIA, OPSOMANIA, 
MORPHINOMANIA 



DIPSOMANIA, OPSOMANIA, 
MORPHINOMANIA 

THE drink habit is as amenable to treat- 
ment by hypnotic suggestion as cigar- 
ette addiction. In fact, some of the popular 
cures are in reality mere suggestion cures, 
there being no specific virtue in the drugs ad- 
ministered, certainly not in the hypodermatic 
injection of Croton water. Periodic drink 
storms are usually forecast by significant 
s;>TQptoms well known to the family and 
friends of the victim — irritability of temper, 
restlessness, unaccountable depression. Im- 
mediately upon the appearance of these 
symptoms, the patient should be treated by 
suggestion. Many such subjects recognize 
their danger, and sincerely wish to be cured. 
115 



Hypnotism in Culture 

Thej are told not to drink, that they have 
lost their taste for beer, wine, whiskey ; that 
alcohol in any form will disgust them, and 
that they cannot take it, cannot carry the con- 
taining glass to their lips. The society of 
low companions is tabooed; the pleasures as- 
sociated with drink and the glamour of the 
bar-room are pictured as meretricious; the 
physical, mental, moral, and financial bank- 
ruptcy that accompanies dipsomania is held 
up before the view of the sleeper, and he is 
forced to the conviction that begotten of this 
apprehension has come into his soul an ab- 
horrence for drink and all that it stands for. 
The subpersonal mind is then directed to the 
vocation or the avocations, or both, as cir- 
cumstances suggest; and the subject is as- 
sured that henceforth he will transact busi- 
ness on a higher plane and seek the society 
of persons who have in themselves qualities 
worth his while to borrow. 
ii6 



Dipsomania 

Habitual drinkers, those who " soak/' as 
Goldsmith described it^ do not, as a rule, wish 
to be cured. Thej enjoy indulgence in alco- 
holic fluids and the false pleasures that at- 
tend it; and about ninety per cent, of them, 
women as w^ell as men, resent the approaches 
of those who desire to save them. Some- 
times, when no other form of appeal is ef- 
fective, they may be frightened into a real- 
ization of the fact that constant use of alco- 
holic stimulants will result in organic changes 
in the liver, kidneys, and brain, or by lower- 
ing the general powers of resistance and at the 
same time irritating the bronchial tubes and 
the lungs, through which the alcohol is in 
part eliminated, markedly predisposes to 
pneumonia and tubercular consumption.* In 
fact, immoderate drinkers may, in sober in- 
tervals, be made to realize, not only that they 

* Seventy per cent, of pneumonia patients use alco- 
hol immoderately. 

117 



Hypnotism in Culture 

are physically depraved, biit intellectually 
degenerated as to the faculties of memory, 
attention, concentration, judgment, and that 
they are deficient in business tact and in the 
general address essential to success. Once 
apprised of their enervated mental condition, 
they honestly desire to correct the habit, but 
cannot of themselves ; the craving simulates a 
mania. Under these circumstances it is com- 
paratively easy to persuade a patient to ac- 
cept treatment, and a rescue may be effected 
in a week's time. But the treatment must be 
persisted in for a much longer period, the 
tendency being to abandon it too soon because 
of a belief in cure. A patient, whose lan- 
guage I quote to show his confidence after a 
single treatment, subsequently fell : " T am 
getting on splendidly, and my better self still 
has complete control, causing me to feel 
that I shall never return to those miserable 
times again, for I have not the slightest de- 
ii8 



Dipsomania 

sire in the world for anything in the alcohol 
line." 

It is quite common for patients to express 
themselves similarly after the first series of 
suggestions, and for relatives to write that 
they are " astounded at the result.'' But if 
some unlooked-for pressure of passion and al- 
lurement is brought to bear on the self-con- 
fident subject, he is almost sure to yield. An 
inebriate patient who went two months in 
'New York without experiencing the slightest 
desire for alcohol, and proof against all so- 
licitations to enter a saloon, encountered in 
Boston a combination of business disappoint- 
ments and temptation that proved irresist- 
ible. Could the operator foresee such a con- 
tingency, he might avert it. Experience 
proves that it is always better to deal in drink 
cases with the nearest of kin rather than di- 
rectly with the patient, who naturally over- 
estimates his powers of resistance. Courting 
119 



Hypnotism in Culture 

a conflict with the demon of drink, as many 
do, is plajing with fire. A dipsomaniac who 
was sent to me from Paris last September, 
for treatment at my summer home, was prac- 
tically cured in a week. He returned with 
me to ^ew York, and there insisted on living 
in a cabaret. The inevitable soon occurred. 

A lady who had resorted to whiskey to en- 
able her to bear certain domestic troubles was 
recently induced by her daughter to avail her- 
self of my aid. The suggestions given were 
to the effect that she would not succumb un- 
der the pressure of unhappiness, but would 
meet her trials without the help of stimu- 
lants. Three days later she reported at my 
office. Her face had lost its congested look, 
her eyes were no longer muddy; the attend- 
ant, who had carefully watched her, stated 
that she had taken no whiskey or other stim- 
ulant in the interval, but had drunk milk in- 
stead. This woman was won by the appeal 
1 20 



Dipsomania 

of a daughter to whom she was devotedly at- 
tached. In many of my cases, however, sim- 
ilar appeals have been fruitless. Mothers 
who have consulted me in behalf of intem- 
perate daughters; fathers whose sons have 
yielded to the temptation of college life and 
have been graduated drunkards ; wives whose 
husbands are sacrificing brilliant opportuni- 
ties through their inability to decline the in- 
vitations of thoughtless friends to drink for 
the sake of sociability, or to abandon their 
practice of resorting, for the transaction of 
business, to clubs and saloons, where every 
contract must be sealed with champagne — 
are unable to persuade the several objects of 
their solicitude to submit to the treatment 
which alone can save. 

There are cases where the drink, tobacco, 
or morphine habit has become so ingrained 
that the early promise of post-hypnotic sug- 
gestion is gradually brought to naught by con- 

121 



Hypnotism in Culture 

tinual returns, seemingly inexplicable, of the 
uncontrollable craving. The automatic mind 
struggles in vain for mastery of a habit which 
has not only evolved into a second nature, but 
is forever converting an unnatural appetite 
into a fiery passion. Suggestion in such an 
event should be supplemented by appropriate 
drugs, and in some instances by discipline. 
In the insanity of extravagant drinking and 
of chronic nicotine poisoning, suggestive 
treatment may sometimes be delayed with ad- 
vantage until after the compulsory reduction 
or withdrawal of the artificial stimulant. 
Patients who, to rid themselves temporarily 
of the importunity of relatives, accept an in- 
stitutional life, with mental reservation as to 
their habits at the termination of the period 
of treatment, are proper subjects for sug- 
gestion while m sanatorio. " The tongue has 
taken the oath, but the mind is unsworn. '^ 
Under such circumstances, with the craving 



Opsomania 

in lull, the subliminal self may be success- 
fully impressed. 

Opsomania, or mania for articles of food, 
particulary delicatessen and confectionery, is 
a much more common condition than is at 
first conceivable. Among the opsomaniacs 
who have applied for treatment are — a lady 
who took up cooking and became a glutton, 
to the wreck of her health ; a gentleman with 
an irresistible craving for chocolate bonbons ; 
and a young man who described himself as 
" handicapped by a constant desire to eat." 
His mother, prior to his birth, would scour 
the markets for choice grapes, peaches, and 
other delicacies, and he believes that he has in- 
herited a longing for these same things which 
leads to periodical indulgence. For a week at 
a time he is able to control himself; then, 
like a dipsomaniac entering upon a debauch, 
he gives way and goes to excesses that are 
prejudicial to his physical well-being. 
123 



Hypnotism in Culture 

Candj mania is widespread in America ; in 
fact, the greatest enemy of the health of our 
young women is the manufacturer of fancy 
confectionery. The natural liking for candy, 
under the stimulus of his combinations of 
chemical flavors, terra alba, and glucose, de- 
velops into a craze, with the natural conse- 
quences — indigestion, mental indolence, 
chronic gastric catarrh, and, most to be de- 
plored, a fetid breath, which renders the pos- 
sessor positively odious. The breath of a 
healthy girl of twenty should be pure and 
sweet as a May breeze; when transformed 
into a nauseous blast by the intemperate use 
of confectionery, it operates as a justifiable 
cause for consignment to Coventry. 

Morphinomania, in the experience of the 
author, is a most difficult drug habit to 
treat by hypnotism. The subjects are not easi- 
ly hypnotizable, and the suggestions come in 
conflict with a more than ordinary massive 
124 



Morphinomania 

impulse to resort to the dangerous spur. 
Moreover, their sincerity lacks staying power, 
their faith is equally unstable, they become 
discouraged on the slightest pretext, and are 
prone to abandon treatment before they have 
given it a fair trial. It is well known that 
the life of a morphinomaniac objectively try- 
ing to overcome the habit is a continuous 
hell ; and to a certain extent this torture 
seems to characterize suggestive treatment, re- 
quiring the administration of heart-sustain- 
ing drugs. Two cases, I know I have saved — 
one, a young lady who is to become a mother 
in the early summer. Her husband writes, 
under date of March 13th : ^^ For weeks she 
has had no morphia, and you would hardly 
know her for the same woman. Thanks to 
w^hat you have done, she is cheerful and 
happy, and has entirely lost her discon- 
tent and tendency to think about herself 
and her feelings. She undoubtedly plays 
125 



Hypnotism in Culture 

better, and is brighter than she has been for 
years/' 

Constructively, this patient, who inherited 
musical talent, had been inspired to utter her 
feelings through the piano as a medium of 
soul expression, with felicity of touch and 
brilliancy of execution, in imitation of the 
great performers. 

The second subject was instructed, while 
lethargic, to reduce the amount taken daily 
33 1-3 per cent, by dropping the noonday 
powder, and the depression occasioned by 
the loss of the morphia was compensated for 
by the administration of 1-30 grain strych- 
nia every three hours, ^ grain sparteine in 
the intervals, and coca port ad libitum, with 
nourishing food, carriage drives in the open 
country, and cheerful company. By such 
reinforcement of the suggestive treatment 
with tonics and nervines, the patient's nerve- 
centres were rendered immune to the usual 
126 



Morphinomania 

discomforts of deprivation, the dose of mor- 
phia was quickly reduced to 1-100 grain, 
and in three weeks the sufferer was radical- 
ly cured, and discharged with the suggestion 
(given in hypnosis) that he would never 
relapse. 



KLEPTOMANIA AND HABIT- 
UAL FALSEHOOD 



KLEPTOMANIA AND HABIT- 
UAL FALSEHOOD 

KLEPT0MA:^^IA, or mania for pilfer- 
ing, is trne moral insanity. Klepto- 
maniacs are impelled by an irresistible im- 
pulse to steal, without reference to any use 
they may make of the stolen articles. They 
are often persons of wealth, with means at 
their disposal to gratify every whim. This 
moral disease more commonly afflicts women, 
and according to some observers assumes the 
nature of hysterical paroxysms which it is 
impossible for the victims to control. It 
is occasionally an accompaniment of nervous 
depression, and is unquestionably hereditary. 
Some kleptomaniacs are attended with im- 
perative voices that bid them appropriate the 
131 



Hypnotism in Culture 

property of others. A kleptomaniac^ though 
perfectly sane in every other direction, fails 
to recognize the gravity of his weakness; he 
impulsively steals, and is not morally respon- 
sible. A thief deliberately steals, and is 
morally responsible. The distinction be- 
tween the two is sometimes difficult to draw^, 
and depends largely on the mental condition 
of the subject and the neurotic history of his 
family, considered in connection with the 
character and value of the articles purloined 
and the circumstances of the stealer. 

Thieves desirous of reform, and klepto- 
maniacs, especially if young or appreciative 
of the seriousness of their abnormal propen- 
sity, are curable by hypnotic suggestion. 
The following cases from my memorandum- 
book illustrate the successful treatment of 
thievery and kleptomania : — 

A. B., aged seventeen, who had been a 
thief for five years, had been repeatedly ar- 
132 



Kleptomania 

rested, once for house-breaking, and was, as 
he expressed it, in the habit of " swiping '' 
whenever a good chance offered itself, came 
to me on March 19th and begged me to cure 
him of his uncontrollable propensity, which 
he was sure would sooner or later land him 
in a felon's cell. After considerable diffi- 
culty I succeeded in putting him in a state of 
profound lethargy, and then gave him two 
suggestions, each repeated three times: first, 
you will not feel the inclination to steal any 
more; second, you will not steal any more. 
I then suggested that he lived in a country 
where honesty was sure to succeed, and prom- 
ised a bright future conditioned entirely by 
his respect for the property of his neighbors. 
I finally said, " Lose that hang-dog, guilty 
expression, put on a manly bearing, and look 
everybody straight in the eye.'' A week 
later my light-fingered young friend met me 
with a frank smile, and, looking me directly 
133 



Hypnotism in Culture 

in the eye, said, ^' Doctor, you didn't put me 
to sleep last Sunday, but it's very funny, 
I haven't had any temptation to swipe things 
since." It is not uncommon for hypnotized 
patients to say that they have not been asleep 
at all. This boy was profoundly lethargic 
for twenty minutes, and I had considerable 
difficulty in arousing him. 

The next case, Stella Bradford, aged thir- 
teen, was brought to my office on May 11th 
by her Sunday-school teacher, to be treated 
for kleptomania. She was subject to sudden 
and uncontrollable impulses to steal, without 
regard to any possible use she could make of 
the appropriated articles, which she did not 
even take the trouble to conceal. She sim- 
ply stole for the love of stealing, and lied to 
excite attention and secure admiration. Her 
brothers and sisters are all normal in their 
propensities. Her mother is an unusually 
pious woman, but shortly before Stella's birth 
134 



Kleptomania 

received a shock in the drowning of a beauti- 
ful boy, which appears to have brought her 
to the verge of insanity, as she was delirious 
for six weeks thereafter. In striving to ac- 
count for the moral obliquity of Stella, I 
have inquired minutely into the attitude of 
the mother toward Providence in her afflic- 
tion. If it had been one of rebellion, I might 
thus explain the moral defect in Stella. A 
friend has investigated the case with the fol- 
lowing result: Stella's mother did not know 
that a child might be expected until after 
the shock of the drowning of her little boy. 
When asked if she could ascertain what the 
character of her delirium was, she said that 
too long a time had elapsed for her to recall 
particulars. Her old doctor is dead, but he 
told her at the end of the delirium that she 
would probably have trouble with the ex- 
pected child if it should survive. The moth- 
er said that she felt no anger at the time, 
135. 



Hypnotism in Culture 

only intense sorrow. Her whole character 
is strong, but acceptant of the many vicissi- 
tudes of her lot with resignation. Undoubt- 
edly the prenatal shock has a bearing on 
Stella's present condition. 

The child was hypnotized, and told (de- 
structively) that she would not lie nor steal, 
nor feel any further desire so to do. The 
fear suggestion was to the effect that thieves 
and liars are hateful to upright human be- 
ings and to God, and that the penalty for in- 
dulging in falsehood and pilfering is ostra- 
cism from respectable society and the incur- 
rence of the divine displeasure. The con- 
structive treatment or building force was 
imparted in the additional suggestion that 
she was going to be loved and respected both 
by her friends and the Almighty for her hon- 
esty and truth, her devotion to her school- 
work, and her cheerful service in the house- 
hold. 

136 



Kleptomania 

On May 15th her godmother brought Stella 
again to my office, with the report that she had 
made no attempt at pilfering since our first 
interview, returned the correct change when 
sent on errands, and had excited the surprise 
of the home circle by her respectful demeanor 
and her loss of what were designated '' pouty 
fits." She was hypnotized a second time, 
and the original suggestions were emphati- 
cally repeated. Her godmother reported as 
follows on May 18th : "According to promise, 
I send a few additional particulars in the 
case of Stella. On leaving your house on 
Monday morning, I thought I would try the 
effect of a fairly long walk. Stella talked 
pleasantly and quietly, but with once or twice 
a little verbal embroidery, which I appeared 
not to hear. There was no nervousness nor 
excitement. After reaching home I sent her 
for a bag of sea-salt, in order to secure her 
absence while I explained to her mother 
137 



Hypnotism in Culture 

your directions as to kind treatment and en- 
tire oblivion as to past error. The whole 
family have rather noticeable small dark 
eyes, with a peculiar expression which would 
lead to distrust if one did not know their 
hard - working and industrious lives. I 
imagine that any sudden mental shock might 
produce insanity in one or more members of 
this family. Shortly after reaching home on 
Monday, Stella expressed a wish to help her 
mother by earning some money, and is now 
out at service. Before she left the house, 
her mother warned her solemnly, and Stella 
said, ^ I'll never take anything again, mam- 
ma.' So the intention is right if the will 
continues strong enough to hold to it." 
Here the suggestion that she was going to be 
useful to her mother was objectively carried 
by Stella far beyond my intentions or even 
thoughts. 

T hypnotized this interesting little girl 
138 



Kleptomania 

three days later, assured her that she was 
going to be respected for her goodness and 
truth, that she would grow into a woman 
whom everybody would love (by no means 
a stretch of the imagination, for Stella has 
many admirable qualities, and is to be classed 
in the category of "lovely sinners"), and 
that she would not take a thing that did not 
belong to her until she saw me again in Oc- 
tober. I then bade her good-bye. A letter 
from her godmother, dated July 11th, is ex- 
ceedingly gratifying. The sister that has 
charge of Stella pronounces her " all right." 
To quote the godmother's words : 

" Last Saturday our Sunday-school picnic 
took place, and Stella was quite in evidence 
by 9 A.M. And I must say that all day she 
showed in a most favorable light, swinging 
the little children, and helping in every way 
most unselfishly. I was able to treat her 
with all my former cordiality, and not once 
139 



Hypnotism in Culture 

was there a jarring note. I hope for the 
best, for she certainly has good traits. '' 

A second letter received from the god- 
mother on the 25th of February indicates 
that her hopes were not unfounded. Stella 
has continued to improve morally, and has 
won the regard of those about her by her lov- 
ing disposition and readiness to lend a help- 
ing hand. A communication from the lit- 
tle girl herself contains this statement : ^^ I 
am trying to follow in the footsteps of Christ, 
our only example." 

Other thieves and kleptomaniacs have come 
under my notice, or my services have been 
sought to effect their cure. But most of them 
have been unwilling to submit to treatment. 
I know a serving - woman whose bureau- 
drawers are stuffed with stolen napkins, em- 
broidered doilies, and monogrammed damask. 
for which she has no possible use. She has 
taken them by the dozen from families who 
140 



Kleptomania 

have employed her as housekeeper, and she 
gloats over her hoarded linen as a miser over 
his gold. This is moral insanity. 

I also knew a physician of prominence who 
never lost an opportunity to steal from the 
tables of his hosts articles of food, which he 
concealed about his person and carried off to 
his apartments. This gentleman was worth 
more than $100,000, and was in receipt of 
a generous salary besides the income from his 
fortune. He had no family to support, and 
stole food simply in obedience to an ungov- 
ernable impulse. 

The following representative description of 
a kleptomaniac, periodically lucid, was writ- 
ten by a distressed sister, who sought in vain 
to place the subject under my care: 

" My brother is a bright, apt boy, sensi- 
tive, tender-hearted, and very susceptible to 
gentle persuasion. He is generous to an ex- 
treme, and has passing moods of longing 
141 



Hypnotism in Culture 

after righteousness, and of intense agony of 
spirit which are really piteous to behold. At 
such times the conviction of innate depravity 
seems to fill him with self-loathing and a 
strange sort of self -terror; and I have seen 
him fling himself on the floor and lie there, a 
writhing piece of humanity, moaning, ' Oh, 
mother ! you can't help me, no one can help 
me. I want to be good, but I can't, I can't.' 

" But there are also other times, perhaps 
after he has committed some theft from an 
employer or fellow-workman, when he ap- 
pears to be thoroughly hardened and indif- 
ferent, despite all our efforts to make him re- 
alize the gravity of his offence. In every in- 
stance, whether he is likely to benefit by it or 
not, his direct impulse is to use deceit rather 
than straightforwardness. Falsehood is to 
him as truth. He stoops to the meanest 
thefts, with no other motive than to obtain 
money to squander with the most shocking 
142 



Kleptomania 

recklessness. On one occasion he crept at 
night into the room of a poor, hard-working 
colored student who had befriended him, and 
took ten dollars from the man's pocket — his 
last cent. At a subsequent time he induced 
one girl friend to lend him her gold ring, and 
another her handsome gold watch, a family 
heirloom; then pawned both articles and 
threw the tickets away. Some five years ago 
he got into trouble with a prominent book 
concern through dishonest dealings in his can- 
vassing; and within a few months he col- 
lected a large sum of money under pretence 
of being an agent for Success. He is also 
a religious hypocrite, and plays the rolo of an 
evangelist, meeting with amazing success in 
his efforts to collect funds. 

" Do you think there is any hope for such 
a character ? The divine is there, but its 
sparks are so faint that I fear there is actual- 
ly no foundation for you to build on." 
H3 



Hypnotism in Culture 

In every case of kleptomania that has come 
under my observation, the propensity to lie 
has been associated with the impulse to steal. 
It would seem naturally impossible for these 
subjects to tell the truth; and where hered- 
ity can be traced, it will usually be found 
that the parent who has transmitted the 
mania is a double offender. The family his- 
tory of a kleptomaniac girl in whose behalf 
I have just been consulted, interestingly il- 
lustrates this point. The patient's grand- 
father was a morphinomaniac. Her father, 
who was highly educated, was born with a 
propensity to steal, and did steal, against his 
better impulses and very will. He stole be- 
cause he could not help it, and lied for the 
same reason. Haunted by the conviction of 
his infirmity, and with the consciousness that 
he could not overcome it, he finally became in- 
sane. His twelve-year-old daughter, a sweet, 
sensitive, and extremely nervous child, has 
144 



Kleptomania 

inherited the father's failings, although oth- 
erwise mentally normal. There is no doubt 
that this girl may be obliqued from running 
her father's foil by judicious suggestion. 

From what has been said in this chapter, 
it is clear that kleptomaniacs are no more re- 
sponsible for their acts than other insane per- 
sons. The medico-legal bearing of this fact 
should not be lost sight of in trials for grand 
or petty larceny. Expert testimony may sep- 
arate the irresponsible kleptomaniac from the 
responsible thief, and thus save innocent per- 
sons from the disgrace that attaches to the 
punishment of criminals. 



DISEQyiLIBRATION,OR MEN- 
TAL UNBALANCE : MORAL' 
ANAESTHESIA 



DISEQUILIBRATION.OR MEN- 
TAL UNBALANCE : MORAL 
ANESTHESIA 

MAx^Y persons are born with "unbal- 
anced minds or minds in dissym- 
metry, one group of faculties developed at the 
expense of another group, a single talent or 
aptitude monopolizing almost the entire out- 
put of mental energy. Eemarkable pre- 
cocity of certain intellectual powers accom- 
panied with arrested development of others — 
one-sided gifts or knacks — mark this condi- 
tion. As Pope wrote, '^ Good or bad to one 
extreme betrays the unbalanced mind.'' The 
restoration to equilibrium of such asym- 
149 



Hypnotism in Culture 

metric minds may be accomplished by appro- 
priate hypnotic suggestion. 

A recent experiment of the writer's estab- 
lishes the fact that disequilibration may be 
adjusted; a congenital cerebral deficiency 
overcome; a personality crippled by thought 
inhibition, mental apathy, and defective at- 
tention transformed into a personality with- 
out a blot upon the brain, and so impending 
insanity shunted — by the use of hypnotic sug- 
gestion as an educational agency. In Octo- 
ber, 1899, he accepted for experimental work 
the case of a Russian Hebrew boy, George 
Rubin, known to his school-fellows as " Crazy 
George, '^ and to the newspapers as the music- 
mad boy-genius of Brooklyn. An examina- 
tion showed at once that young Rubin occu- 
pied the neutral ground which divides the 
sane from the insane. He exhibited many of 
the prodromata of madness, viz., exagger- 
ated irritability, sullenness, preternatural 
150 



Disequilibration 

suspicion, accompanied with a slowness of all 
thought processes, great difficulty of recol- 
lection, general incoherence, ill-timed hilar- 
ity, lack of interest both in amusement and 
occupation, aversion to the society of other 
children, absurd fears, hallucinations, and 
night terrors, and a conspicuous one-sided at- 
tention pathologically diminished for ordi- 
nary things, but morbidly increased for mu- 
sic. His one passion was violin playing ; on 
this subject he was a monomaniac. Experts 
had pronounced him a remarkable performer, 
considering his age and his opportunities. 
His mother denied any sexual aberration. 

This patient was brought to me for a solu- 
tion of the question. Can approaching in- 
sanity or congenital mental unbalance be suc- 
cessfully treated by hypnotism? I confess 
it was with considerable misgiving that I took 
in hand this vicious, intractable, headstrong, 
contrary, and in every way untoward child- 
151 



Hypnotism in Culture 

genius — an intellectual quadroon with one 
molecule in four of normal lecithin — and he 
proved to be the most difficult subject I ever 
put under hypnotic influence. At the first 
interview an hour was occupied in inducing 
him to lie quietly upon my lounge. Then 
his restless black eyes roved from the car- 
nelian held before them to the volumes in the 
bookcases, to the vases of Bohemian glass on 
the mantel and the pictures on the wall. As 
the experiment progressed, his gaze sought 
the red stone oftener and lingered upon it. A 
silly laugh repeatedly broke the spell ; but at 
the end of the second hour his eyelids closed, 
he breathed deeply, and entered the stage of 
suggestibility. During these two hours I 
talked to the boy in a low and soothing tone, 
assuring him that I was his friend, and that I 
would remove all harassing fears from his 
mind and put it in a condition to receive the 
greatest benefit from the musical instruction 

I?2 



Disequilibration 

that would be provided. At the second 
seance, young Rubin was hypnotized in one 
hour, with the help of a suspended diamond, 
and this method has since been pursued in his 
case. He looks at the gem as one fascinated. 
The earlier suggestions were to the effect that 
he was no longer nervous, that he had no fear 
of the dark or of phantom rats, that he would 
sleep without terrorizing dreams. The post- 
hypnotic fulfilment of these suggestions indi- 
cated the apjDropriateness of more direct edu- 
cational work. The temper was first dealt 
with; the outbursts of passion were forbid- 
den, obedience and docility were inculcated. 
Then at a subsequent meeting followed the 
cultivation of the attention and the memory. 
A most gratifying response to these lessons 
suggested the development of the reasoning 
powers, and the automatic mind was directed 
to the study of arithmetic and prepared for 
its successful and enthusiastic pursuit. A 
153 



Hypnotism in Culture 

marked character change has certainly been 
effected. The boy is now docile, obedient, 
and happy. The tangled faculties have been 
unravelled, and he has become rational and 
quick of comprehension, has acquired powers 
of observation, concentration, and recollec- 
tion that he was entirely without before the 
first treatment. He can describe and narrate 
with ease, and answer questions without hes- 
itation. His face beams with an intelligent 
expression entirely new to it, and his interest 
in his surroundings is absorbing. The next 
philosophical step in such a case is the objec- 
tive development of the musical gift, ac- 
companied with a weekly hypnotic treat- 
ment, having in view a compensatory talent- 
building in the line of any deficiency that 
may be detected. 

In the cases of disequilibration that have 
come under the author's notice, the aptitude 
present to an excessive degree has usually 
15^ 



Disequilibration 

been musical ; in two instances, it was math- 
ematical. Unbalanced musical or math- 
ematical aptitude is likely to be accompanied 
with moral anaesthesia more or less profound. 
To rouse the patient from his moral sleep de- 
mands ingenuous sympathy, supreme tact, 
unremitting effort, tireless patience, and a 
white life on the part of the operator. The 
impulses of a hypnotized person, even if a 
moral idiot, are, as a rule, good; and if he 
detects a flaw in the character of his sugges- 
tionist, hypnotization will have been in vain. 
Uncompromising loyalty to the moral law, 
read by the inthralled soul in the mind of 
his hypnotist, and recognized as the main- 
spring of the power that can lift him from 
the slime-pits of vicious indulgence, is an 
indispensable condition. 

Three degrees of moral insensibility are il- 
lustrated in the following cases, the first of 
which was radically cured in a short time, 
155 



Hypnotism in Culture 

the second perceptibly improved from the be- 
ginning, and the third only after repeated 
trials. 

Case 1, Merrill B., illustrates temporary 
insensibility to the sacredness of sex, accom- 
panied with objective indulgence of the per- 
version, which is as uncontrollable either by 
child or adult as rubeola or typhoid fever. 
In this single line was the patient, a math- 
ematical genius, morally diseased. The 
young man in question came to New York 
chaste from a New England city, but was 
soon corrupted by women of the street until 
promiscuous concubinage became a passion 
with him. I devoted four consecutive Sun- 
day afternoons to his case, in the hope of re- 
moving sensual standards and constructing 
moral ideas through suggestion. The patient 
was hypnotized and told to avoid all allure- 
ment. He was instructed to resist solicita- 
tion on the streets, and assured that his in- 
156 



Disequilibration 

tellect was in control and that his animal nat- 
ure was subject to it. The thought of hon- 
orable marriage with a pure Avoman, who 
would be in sympathy with his aims and help 
him in his life work, w^as made to take the 
place of a mania for consorting with im- 
proper companions. Worthy ambitions were 
suggested, assurance that he could master the 
studies he was pursuing at Cooper Institute, 
and would develop intellectually along the 
lines he had chosen — with the result of 
awakening a superior interest in his books, 
and clothing him with ability to overcome the 
difficulties of higher arithmetic and geom- 
etry. The patient was thoroughly torpid, 
remembered nothing of the conversation, and 
waked up at the word, dizzy and temporarily 
confused. 

Between April 2d and April 9th, the dates 
of the second and the third hypnotism, he did 
not yield to the solicitations of women who 
157 



Hypnotism in Culture 

accosted him, and began to feel a loathing for 
their society. The efficacy of auto-suggestion 
was then explained to him, and he practised 
it as a supplementary procedure. On April 
9th, he was hypnotized for the third time and 
told that he would care for such characters 
no longer, and would never again respond to 
their approaches. The possibilities of his 
career as an electrician were then unfolded 
to him, and special emphasis was laid upon 
the fact that sensual indulgence and the at- 
tainment of intellectual successes were incom- 
patible; that he was sure of the second, and 
would not stoop to the first. He was further 
assured that he need have no fears of future 
temptations. 

On April ICth, the patient reported that 
he had experienced a strange feeling of am- 
bition entirely new to him, that he had given 
no thought to evil companionships, but that 
his whole mind was focussed on his mathe- 
158 



Moral Imbecility 

matical studies, and he spent his spare time 
in solving difficult problems. He was hyp- 
notized a fourth time, and urged strongly to 
renewed application. The other suggestions 
were repeated, and he was discharged cured. 
W., a young man of twenty, began, at the 
age of fourteen, to smoke cigarettes and ex- 
hibit symptoms of moral degeneracy. He 
rapidly developed a tendency to lie, and to 
steal from his mother's parlor articles of 
vertu and pawn them, in order to equip him- 
self financially for gambling and for consort- 
ing with tankerwomen. His mind had be- 
come noticeably enfeebled, especially his 
memory and power of association, and he 
was indolent to an extreme, resigning posi- 
tions as fast as they were secured for him, or 
conducting himself with such indifference 
as to compel his discharge. The first weak- 
ness attacked was his licentiousness, and this 
was promptly removed, so that he thought 
159 



Hypnotism in Culture 

no more of loose female companions and saw 
life differently, realizing his subliminal view 
of it from the higher plane of chastity and 
conjugal fidelity to be wholesome. He next 
acquired frankness, tact, and powers of ap- 
plication, and his attention was directed to a 
business life in the commercial world. His 
report a few days later was to the effect that 
he was anxious to secure employment at once, 
and that " going round doing nothing is 
getting very tiresome." The cigarette habit 
finally received attention, and during the 
week after the first treatment he felt con- 
strained to reduce the number of cigarettes 
from ten to ^ve a day, and on Saturday he 
forgot all about smoking until ten o'clock at 
night. He was hypnotized the fourth time 
at the end of the third week, and told that he 
was now face to face with his career, that he 
was entering upon it with nerve and confi- 
dence, and with a resolution to be known 
1 60 



Moral Imbecility 

for his good common-sense and sterling in- 
tegrity — that all his sins and weaknesses 
were prejudicial to his standing and were 
abandoned, especially the cigarette habit, 
and that his motto now was, ^^ Forget the past, 
conquer the future; do not allow it to con- 
quer you." This was emphatically repeated 
three times, and there has been no occasion 
since to resume treatment. 

The case just narrated is one of moral 
collapse reclaimable by apposite suggestion. 
The following is a case of congenital moral 
destitution with marked musical talent — 
which I regarded for a long time as hopeless, 
but which finally responded to compulsory 
hypnotism, and lost its darkness in a moral 
sunrise. Philetas M., aged twenty-one — an 
adept in all kinds of deviltry; a cigarette 
fiend ; an incorrigible liar, unblushingly deny- 
ing scarce-cold crimes with the proofs of their 
commission in our very hands, and constant- 
L i6i 



Hypnotism in Culture 

Ij deceiving his parents with rotten-hearted 
promises; a borrower of money under false 
pretences, and an out-and-out thief for whom 
jail had no terrors; a gambler; a profligate 
ready to pawn the clothes on his back at the 
bidding of town-dowdies; a trencher-knight 
of the sublions of the Tenderloin; with 
crippled powers of application except in the 
line of his musical gifts, and without sense 
of responsibility, or care for the consequences 
of evil-doing — this young man, born of par- 
ents of the highest respectability and intel- 
lectual attainments, represented, when first 
introduced to me, a perfect type of the moral 
malkin. There seemed to be nothing in 
his soul to appeal to, and he laughed the 
hollow laugh of moral bankruptcy. 

As this subject was deliberately resistant, 

all ordinary methods of hypnotization failed, 

so that I yielded to the mother's request and 

resorted to compulsory hypnotism. Xo matter 

162 



Moral Imbecility 

how refractory or nervous the patient may 
be, to this he is obliged to respond (p. 253) 
The general tenor of the suggestions given 
to our young delinquent was as follows : 
^^ Your better self condemns your course. 
You can no longer afford to prejudice your 
standing with God and man. You cannot 
consort with impure women, nor take other 
men's goods, nor speak untruths ; but you will 
now be known for your chastity and conti- 
nence, your integrity, and your truthfulness." 
The fear thought dwelt upon was this: 
^' There is but one ending to the life you are 
leading — the prison cell. Do you accept it ? 
]^o. There is but one outcome of an appren- 
ticeship to debauchery — physical disease, 
moral contagion, spiritual death. Do you 
accept this? !N'o. Will you be a self-mur- 
derer ? 'No. Will you by polluting any 
woman make your mother and your sisters 
sharers in the consequences of your act ? 
163 



Hypnotism in Culture 

Will you cast such a reproach, on the pure 
souls that are wrapped up in your remaining 
chaste and upright and honorable ? You can- 
not. You dare not. Arouse, then, to a true 
sense of your position, of the enormity of 
your sin, of its relationship to your future, 
which will be in the line of your choice and 
actions in this world. You have no further 
love for the false life you have led. You 
loathe it. You have turned from it, and are 
seeking a worthy service with v/holesome 
ambitions and aspirations. It shall be your 
highest happiness to make your parents hap- 
py, not only by an affectionate regard for 
their wishes, but by walking in the ways 
which they approve. And you are going to 
refine your nature forthwith, and develop 
your aesthetic brain organs, and thus increase 
your general receptivity, by the study of 
music, for which you have great natural apti- 
tude.'^ 

164 



Moral Imbecility 

After the first treatment, tlie patient's 
mother reported that he seemed more quiet 
and thoughtful, that there certainly had 
been an awakening of his moral nature. ^^ It 
may be slight, but there is a responsiveness 
about him that we have not known before. 
Last evening he went to church in all the 
storm. His father went first, and after try- 
ing to read for a bit, he said, suddenly, ' I am 
going to church.' You may imagine my de- 
light ! How he w^ould act under temptation 
is yet to be seen." 

After the second treatment, the report 
was that his manner was unnaturally sub- 
dued; that there was, even in ordinary con- 
versations, more to which one may appeal; 
and that he had asked for no money to buy 
cigarettes. 

The effects of the third treatment were 
much more decided. The patient was notice- 
ably amiable, tractable, considerate, oblig- 
165 



Hypnotism in Culture 

ing, and frank in his admissions. He was con- 
tented to remain in the house, and displayed 
an affection for his mother and father never 
before kno\vn, accompanying them to a con- 
cert, anticipating their wants, and exhibiting 
a courtesy utterly at variance with his pre- 
vious bearing. He devoted from three to seven 
hours daily to his music, and seemed to have 
abandoned his evil ways. Then came a dis- 
couraging relapse, followed by a quick rally. 

The fourth treatment was followed by tlie 
immediate disappearance of all bad traits, 
and the fifth by a strange awakening of slum- 
bering ambitions. The young man could not 
be restrained from coming to ^ew York and 
entering upon a business career. 

This case of Philetas M., who has always 
been a mystery to his parents and friends, 
is fraught with great interest, for it proves 
that there is hope in the most profound moral 
lethargy. 

i66 



HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION IN 
THE TREATMENT OF SPEECH 
DEFECTS 



HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION IN 
THE TREATMENT OF SPEECH 
DEFECTS 

FUJSTCTIOXAL disorders of utterance, 
like stammering, stuttering, lisping, 
and temporary loss of speech from nervous 
shock, are appropriate conditions for hyp- 
notic treatment. 

The musical instrument with which we 
speak and sing is formed of two elastic mem- 
branes known as the vocal cords stretched 
side by side across a short tubular box, the 
larynx, placed on the top of the windpipe. 
Voice is due to the vibration of these vocal 
cords set in motion by air forced from the 
lungs by the muscles of respiration. It is 
169 



Hypnotism in Culture 

modified hj the resonance chambers of the 
chest below and of the mouth and nose above, 
and is converted into articulate speech by 
the action of the lips, teeth, tongue, palate, 
and jaws. Vowel sounds are produced by 
simple cord vibration, modified by the dif- 
ferent sizes and shapes assumed by the 
resonant cavity of the mouth; consonantal 
sounds, by certain adjustments and move- 
ments of the mouth parts above the larynx, 
amounting in some instances to an obstruc- 
tion or cut-off of the outgoing air in the 
emission of voice sounds. 

Inability to connect consonants with suc- 
ceeding vowels in the attempt to pronounce 
words — uncontrollable spasmodic repetition 
of the initial sounds of the words it is desired 
to utter — is known as stuttering, and is the 
most common of all speech defects. There 
is no error in articulation, but distinct spasms 
of the muscles of phonation give rise to dis- 
170 



Speech Defects 

jointed utterances. Speech characterized by 
involuntary pauses and imperfect articula- 
tion is called stammering. A stammerer 
experiences difficulty in uttering individual 
sounds; a stutterer, in making syllabic com- 
binations. The person who stammers is per- 
plexed to utter anything, and describes the 
retarded words as sticking in his throat. 
Overindulgence in alcoholic beverages was 
long ago recognized as a cause of " stam- 
mering tongues " as well as of ^^ staggering 
feet." The person who stutters produces 
sounds, even if they are not the ones he de- 
sires to produce, and frequently has recourse 
to other words than those he vainly attempts 
to utter. 

Confusion, diffidence, timidity, and an hys- 
terical nature are active causes of stuttering, 
which is increased by mental excitement until 
it becomes painfully embarrassing. Stam- 
mering, on the contrary, particularly if it 
171 



Hypnotism in Culture 

be due to irregular contractions of the dia- 
phragm, often disappears under the stress of 
emotional agitation or exhilaration. A stam- 
mering patient tells me that in cultivating a 
new acquaintance she is able to disguise for 
a while, under the novel conditions, her mor- 
tifying weakness. 

In habitual stammering there are likely 
to be malformations of the articulating or- 
gans (short tongue, tongue-tie), that inter- 
fere with the pronunciation of certain 
sounds; but this is exceptional in stuttering, 
which, however, is often hereditary. 

Both stammering and stuttering are affec- 
tions of overstrained, undernourished, and 
anaemic children, boys being more susceptible 
than girls in the proportion of four to one. 
Both argue some defect in the central ner- 
vous system, and both are classed among the 
physical stigmata of degeneration. The con- 
tour of skull and the dejected expression in 
172 



speech Defects 

many stutterers suggest the degenerate. Ex- 
treme mental depression not uncommonly 
accompanies these defects, and some patients 
confess to me the continual presence of sui- 
cidal thoughts. 

These tAvo functional speech defects, par- 
ticularly if they represent contracted habits, 
result from mimicry or association with oth- 
ers who stutter or stammer, are subject to in- 
termissions," or are due to nervousness, ex- 
pectation of failure, watchfulness for the 
dreaded letters or words — are remediable by 
hypnotism. The treatment consists in es- 
tablishing the patient's confidence in his abil- 
ity to utter, first a few, and gradually all 
perplexing syllables or consonants. Rela- 
tives and friends should be warned against 



•* The author numbers among his patients a neu- 
rotic woman who stammers distressingly for several 
days in succession, and then for an equal number of 
days speaks with grace and fluency. 

173 



Hypnotism in Culture 

permitting ridicule of the unfortunate, as 
objective moral influences play an important 
role among the agencies of cure. Thought- 
less companions are too apt to assume the 
part of persifleur. 

My first case of stuttering was a young 
man who asked to be treated for the cigarette 
habit, i^oticing that the boy became easily 
confused and stammered badly, I gave him 
the suggestion that blushing and stammer- 
ing, as well as addiction to cigarettes, would 
interfere with his success in business, that 
he would go manfully up to his employer and 
talk without involuntary breaks in his 
speech; and I told him on awakening to ad- 
dress me without any hesitancy — which to 
my delight he did. I have not heard him 
stammer since, and the boys who associate 
with him say that he has gotten bravely over 
it. 

A college lecturer on music applied to me 
174 



speech Defects 

in June with the following history : He expe- 
rienced great difficulty in pronouncing the 
lingual-frictional s, and the explosives d and 
g, normally sounded by the sudden imposi- 
tion and withdrawal of voice obstruction. In 
public speaking he found himself constantly 
on the watch for words beginning with these 
letters; and he was haunted with the fear 
of failing before an audience to such an ex- 
tent that his professional duties were serious- 
ly interfered with. He had become patho- 
logically self-conscious. His English also 
was rendered impure by reason of the con- 
stant necessity of resorting to inexact substi- 
tutes for the impossible words and phrases. 
This patient was hypnotized and directed to 
speak without hesitancy, and to use graceful 
and melodious language which his musical 
sense w^ould approve. The suggestion was 
given that his automatic mind was now ap- 
prised of the breach of principle in the 
175 



Hypnotism in Culture 

mechanism of phonation, and in control of 
the out-go of nervous energy concerned in 
the causation of the voice-producing blast; 
that this flow would be full and strong and 
sustained; that he need therefore no longer 
be on the watch for words beginning with d, 
g, and s; that he could not afford to stammer, 
and that he would address me without stam- 
mering when I awakened him. This he did 
to my entire satisfaction. 

This case is paralleled by that of a lad 
who, when requested recently to read a page 
in my reception-room, was unable to utter an 
audible sound. His mother, who accom- 
pained him, had done his talking for years, 
and thus he had learned to depend on her for 
escape from embarrassing positions. After 
the first hypnotism this boy spoke for thirty- 
six hours as well as the average youth. He 
then began to relapse. A study of the situa- 
tion satisfied me that the relapse was due to 
176 



Speech Defects 

the nervous anxiety of his mother and her ill- 
timed assistance. Above all things, a stam- 
merer mnst learn automatically to depend on 
himself; any interference on the part of a 
third person negatives the suggestion. Re- 
ferred to a military school at some distance 
from his home, where he has been under the 
care of intelligent teachers whom I made 
acquainted with the necessities of the case, 
this youth rapidly recovered the use of his 
speech. When he came home for the Christ- 
mas vacation, to quote from his mother's let- 
ter, " he talked with no hesitancy at all." 
'Nor only so. In response to my suggestions 
that he would take interest in his studies and 
apply himself diligently, he achieved high 
rank at the school. " His reports," his moth- 
er writes, " have been surprisingly satisfac- 
tory. He has kept his record up to the high- 
est right along, and at the end of the term in 
December he stood fourth from the head of 
M 177 



Hypnotism in Culture 

the entire scliool of over fifty boys/' This 
youth has since been made an ofiicer in the 
school, and is quick and fluent in using the 
language of command. 

A gentleman who has long suffered from 
the limitations which stammering places 
upon one's usefulness, has, in sending his 
application for treatment, written the follow- 
ing masterly analysis of his case, which I 
transcribe from his letter for the interest and 
instruction of all persons similarly afflicted. 
" In my own case," he says, " there is not 
the slightest organic defect, for at times I 
can talk as fluently as any one. Stammering 
is with me the result of spasmodic action of 
the diaphragm and glottis, produced by a 
mental condition. I have always believed 
that if I could only be relieved of the con- 
sciousness that I had ever stammered, I 
would stammer no longer. Will-power is in- 
effective to control the habit, for back of all 
178 



Speech Defects 

determination not to stammer is a latent 
consciousness that I am powerless to combat 
the fear which through long continuance has 
become a part of me. In my opinion, a 
stammerer is to a great extent self-hypno- 
tized. For instance, the fear that I shall 
stammer in the attempt to utter a certain 
word — an impression confirmed by the con- 
sciousness that I have always done so — 
makes it wholly impossible for me at times 
to pronounce that word. This self-sugges- 
tion renders it just as impossible for me to 
utter certain sounds as does the suggestion of 
a hypnotist prevent a subject from bending 
his arm. Then, perhaps, a moment after- 
ward when the necessity for speaking the 
word has passed, I can utter it as fluently as 
any one. This leads me to the conclusion 
that if I could be hypnotized and given a 
powerful counter-suggestion to the effect that 
I had never stammered and could not stam- 
179 



Hypnotism in Culture 

mer even if I tried, the result would be that 
I should speak naturally and without im- 
pediment." 

This patient has struck the key-note of the 
difficulty. Auto - suggestion is unquestion- 
ably the cause of stammering and stuttering 
in many adults. Repeated objective experi- 
ences of failure to enunciate -^x deeply in the 
subliminal self, by cumulative impression, 
an idea of the difficulty or impossibility of 
enunciating. The subliminal self so im- 
pressed transmits the suggestion to the ob- 
jective self, and the fatal habit becomes con- 
firmed. Hypnotism is certainly the most 
reasonable method of attempting a cure. 



IMPERATIVE IDEAS, DELU- 
SIONS, MELANCHOLIA, IN- 
SANITY, AND LOSS OF MEM- 
ORY AS CONDITIONS AMEN- 
ABLE TO HYPNOTIC TREAT- 
MENT 



IMPERATIVE IDEAS, DELU- 
SIONS, MELANCHOLIA, IN- 
SANITY, AND LOSS OF MEM- 
ORY AS CONDITIONS AMEN- 
ABLE TO HYPNOTIC TREAT- 
MENT 

ADELUSIO]^ is a fixed misconception, 
a mental deception or error. If per- 
manent, it becomes a pathological inaccura- 
cy of judgment, and equivalents insanity. 
Thus there are delusions of the sane and de- 
lusions of the insane. The former are re- 
movable by hypnotic suggestion, as are also 
imperative ideas, which are recognized as 
morbid by the subject, but cannot be sup- 
pressed by effort of will. Delusions take the 



Hypnotism in Culture 

form of homicidal and suicidal impulses; 
of remorse for supposed unpardonable sins; 
of morbid fears or apprehensions ; of unlaw- 
ful infatuations; of hauntings by phantoms, 
persecutors, vile words, and preposterous 
notions. 

Delusions and dominant ideas are common- 
ly associated with the condition known as 
neurasthenia, a depraved state of the nervous 
system caused by malnutrition of the nerve 
and brain elements. Although not an Amer- 
ican affection in its origin, neurasthenia is 
peculiarly American in its distribution — the 
rush and tear and overwork, the emotional 
excitement connected with failure and suc- 
cess, the slavery to social obligations and 
pleasures, so characteristic of American 
women, sufficiently accounting for its wide- 
spread existence in this country. American 
fashionable and business life is a continuous 
nerve-storm, ^or again is it peculiarly the 
184 



Imperative Ideas 

rich man's disease, for it afflicts as frequently 
the poorer classes, on whom fall so heavily 
the burdens incident to battle with the world. 
It is prevalent among the agricultural popu- 
lation, especially as a sequel of grippe or in- 
fluenza, of typhoid and of the zymotic dis- 
eases generally (toxic neurasthenia), and 
in its climacteric phase with women of the 
working - class, broken down by a life - long 
domestic service or by excessive child-bearing 
and lactation. The symptoms are generally 
misunderstood, and the condition is improp- 
erly treated or regarded with suspicion, 
indifference, or ridicule. It is not my 
purpose to dwell upon the symptoms of neu- 
rasthenia — the para3sthesias and hyperaes- 
thesias ; the asthenopia and atonic voice ; the 
deficient thirst (all neurasthenics are hydro- 
phobiacs, wdth dessicated nerves) ; the consti- 
pation and fermentative dyspepsia, with their 
accompanying intoxications; the oxaluria 
185 



Hypnotism in Culture 

and uricacidsemia ; the vertigoes and helmet 
headaches; the loss of vaso-motor tone; the 
sensitiveness to noises, vibrations, and jars 
engendered by existence in a land of electric 
and steam cars, of jostling crowds, clanging 
factories, and crowded streets and stores; 
the intractable sleeplessness; the agonizing 
tension, as if under some frightful brain 
pressure; the sickening oppression about the 
praecordia (praecordialangst). We are inter- 
ested for the time being only in the morbid 
fears, especially monophobia (fear of soli- 
tude) and anthropophobia (fear of society) ; 
the dread of responsibilty ; the indecision and 
folie du doute; the fixed conviction of incom- 
petence and uselessness; and the delusional 
mental state with its imperative conceptions. 
I need hardly picture the climax of the con- 
dition, at which faith and hope and love are, 
as Milton said, turned to hell; at which 
Christian principle at last relaxes its hold on 
1 86 



Delusions 

the tortured soul, and the sufferer of woes 
indescribable buries his agony in a self- 
sought grave. 

A nerve-cell is a cell-body under control 
of a nucleus and provided with branches or 
processes, the principal one of which, regard- 
ed as the true outgrowth of the cell, is called 
a neuron. It is the seat of ceaseless metabol- 
ic change, conditioning the replenishment of 
the contained phosphorus-bearing substances 
that represent so much stored or potential 
nerve energy, and that are transformed and 
consumed in the evolution of such energy. 

Physiologists believe that the passage of 
nerve impulses alters the osmotic powers of 
the cell wall toward the surrounding plasma, 
and that by endosmosis and exosmosis the 
nutritive exchange takes place. The dense 
network of capillaries environing the cells 
indicates that they are the centres of this 
nutritive metabolism. In neurasthenia, not 
187 



Hypnotism in Culture 

only are nutritive properties of the cell-en- 
circling plasma altered by auto-intoxication, 
the poison of infectious diseases, or by al- 
coholism, cocainism, morphinism, etc., but in 
some instances, through the action of the 
same causes, the cells appear measurably to 
have lost the power to appropriate what lim- 
ited amount of nourishment may be present. 
In either case, the cell-bodies are more or less 
starved and their energy-projecting powers 
correspondingly impaired. 

'No doubt the commonest cause of the cell- 
exhaustion and consequent impoverishment 
of nerve force that explain nervous prostra- 
tion — the cause of the cause of neurasthenia 
— is the intemperate exercise of the intellect- 
ual faculties and the excessive indulgence 
of the emotions and passions. I believe 
emotional unrest to be a far more prolific 
cause than overwork dissociated from irrita- 
tion and anxiety. The greater number of 



Melancholia 

neurasthenics are unmarried persons, the 
operative cause in single men being the ex- 
citements connected with sexual and alcoholic 
excesses and with gambling ; in single women, 
the harassing struggle for bread. 

In some ill-understood manner, all such 
abuses and irregularities produce cell-degen- 
erating toxines not apparent to the micro- 
scope or appreciable by chemical analysis. 
Whatever, by prolonged or excessive action, 
enfeebles the system, must exhaust the cell- 
bodies faster than they can reproduce them- 
selves. A sufficient amount of nutritive ma- 
terial is not floated to the centres of abnormal 
cell-activity to compensate for the extra de- 
mand made upon them, nor are the waste 
products removed as speedily as is consistent 
with health and safety. And what are the 
results ? Malnutrition and auto-intoxication. 

When we exercise our muscles merely for 
the sake of pleasure, the amusement is called 
i8q ■ 



Hypnotism in Culture 

play. When we similarly exercise eye and 
ear, the amusement is known as aesthetic feel- 
ing. The first is active ; the second, passive. 
In each case, pleasure accompanies the ac- 
tivity of well-nourished and underworked 
organs. On this principle human health and 
happiness hang — well-nourished and under- 
worked cells — a normal amount of activity 
in the terminal nerve-organs of the cerebro- 
spinal nervous system. But let certain 
nerves be called upon to perform an excess 
of work, and painful feeling results. N^ote 
the effect of dynamo-generated electric light 
upon the eye. Those who use incandescent 
lamps for reading may refer the massive pain 
and feeling of irritation in the eyeball that 
follows an evening's work, to the impercep- 
tible unsteadiness in the white-hot filament 
of carbon. This light really pulsates — rises 
and falls with the passage of each commuta- 
tor-bar under the brushes in the dynamo. 
190 



Melancholia 

If the engine be slowed down, the fluctuations 
become visible; but whether they are con- 
sciously appreciated or not, the nerve-fibres 
in the retina must certainly respond, and the 
eyes become wearied; because, although the 
optic fibres are renewed seventeen times a 
second in order that we may learn so much 
and so unremittingly of the world about us, 
the dcvStructive metamorphosis here is in ex- 
cess of repair. In like manner, in all normal 
cerebral and nervous activity, we have con- 
stantly induced partial fatigues, followed by 
partial stimulations. In over - use, the re- 
parative processes are distanced by destruc- 
tive metamorphosis ; nutritive regeneration is 
unable fully to restore the wasted substance 
of the nerve-organs ; and where the hours of 
sleep are invaded to meet the demands of a 
growing business or an imperious ambition, 
those nerve-organs measurably lose the power 
of regeneration and become incapacitated for 
191 



Hypnotism in Culture 

the fulfilment of their functions. Hence 
the morbid impulse to ingest more food than 
can be oxidized ; hence the phosphaturia and 
uricacidgemiaj the indigestion, and the neu- 
rasthenic liver. These are plainly the ef- 
fects of nerve starvation, not the origin of 
it; and here the mistake is made by many 
practitioners who treat merely the symptoms, 
forgetful to remove the causes that give rise 
to the symptoms. The nerve exhaustion pri- 
marily acts to produce the oxaluria, uric- 
acidsemia, gastric and intestinal dyspepsia, 
prostatic neuroses, irritable and depressing 
sexual functions, muscular insufficiencies of 
the eyes and general asthenopia, prsecordial- 
angst, insomnia, and cardiac break-down ; 
and these results react as causes to perpetuate 
the nerve exhaustion. In neurasthenia, ef- 
fects immediately assume the role of causes, 
and hence the danger of error in treating the 
disease. 

192 



Insanity 

The mind of the neurasthenic grows weak 
and irritable ; morbid fears take possession of 
it; hallucinations and delusions are en- 
throned, because the brain cells are deficient 
in healthy lecithin, their normal phosphorus- 
bearing substance, and hence lack capacity 
for estimating at their true worth fugitive 
impressions and symptoms. There is a dis- 
tinct line of demarcation between this state 
and permanent mental disease or defect. A 
neurasthenic patient can be argued into the 
admission that his fears or imperative ideas 
are without foundation, and are to a certain 
extent controllable, although he may not be 
able to dispel them. An insane patient ac- 
cepts his delusion as a reality, and cannot be 
persuaded that it is baseless. The former, if 
properly dealt with, may in the great major- 
ity of cases be restored to healthy mentation 
and made a useful and happy member of so- 
ciety again. But if not treated with expedi- 
N 193 



Hypnotism in Culture 

tion and judgment, mere neurasthenic delu- 
sions are likely to become fixed insane de- 
lusions. 

The natural tendency of the sufferer from 
neurasthenia to unfold his case to every one 
who can be induced to listen to his story indi- 
cates the treatment that is natural. The de- 
pressed mind is but asking for sympathy and 
hopeful assurances which, if repeated suf- 
ficiently often, acts as does hypnotic sugges- 
tion in capturing the subliminal self."^ The 
desired cure is thus effected through mental 



* The writer has always considered association 
with well persons an important feature in the treat- 
ment of neurasthenia. The ordinary invalid should 
never be placed in a sanatorium or treated as the 
inmate of an institution, but he should keep in 
touch with normal life, whether stationary or trav- 
elling, and, above all, he should be surrounded by 
cheerful company, under the influence of friends, 
preferably not members of his family, who are capa- 
ble of using judgment in dispensing their good of- 
fices. 

194 



Insanity 

action. For this reason a neurasthenic 
craves frequent interviews with his physi- 
cian; he instinctively seeks the nervous re- 
inforcement that encouraging constructions 
of his symptoms and reiterated promises of 
recovery impart through the medium of sug- 
gestion. 

A delusion may sometimes be removed by 
a single hypnotization. In September, 1898, 
I was consulted by a lady who was tormented 
by the constant thought that she was going 
to be insane. Although there were positively 
no symptoms of insanity, and no reasons 
whatever for its occurrence, the patient could 
not be convinced that her suspicions were un- 
founded. She was accordingly hypnotized 
and told emphatically that she was not in- 
sane, could not become insane, but was enter- 
ing upon the happiest period of her married 
life ; and she was assured that she would find 
a pleasure in existence that she had not 
195 



Hypnotism in Culture 

known before. From that day to this the de- 
lusion has never returned. 

A most interesting case in which the whole 
bent of thought gave way to a single treat- 
ment was that of a gentleman with the fol- 
lowing history: He was born, by reason of 
some prenatal impression, with a horror 
of a mutilated face. He married a beauti- 
ful, spiritually minded woman; but as he 
did not accept the theory of immortality, he 
desired to enjoy as much as possible of her 
physical comeliness in this life, and was ac- 
customed to contemplate her profile with deep 
pleasure. Eighteen months ago the lady met 
with an accident which scarred her face ; 
and although he had consulted the leading 
surgeons and electricians, none was able to 
repair the damage to his satisfaction, and he 
had become a monomaniac on the subject. 
Whenever he looked into a woman's face, 
he saw his wife's blemished features before 
196 



Loss of Memory 

him; when he attempted to read, his wife's 
disfigured face came between him and the 
book; he Avalked the streets at night, vainly 
trying to rid himself of the abnormal idea; 
and finally he had fled from his wife's side, 
in the hope that separation might put an end 
to his sufferings. But wherever he went, 
and whatever he did, the painful apparition 
of that bruised face would dog him ; his men- 
tal powers were beginning to flag, his memory 
to fail, and he finally applied to me for relief 
through hypnotic channels. Of course I 
asked at once to see his wife, and when she 
came to my office I found that the defect was 
grossly exaggerated. The husband was hyp- 
notized, and the destructive suggestion given 
that his wife's face was not marred, that he 
would no longer see it in a state of mutila- 
tion. The constructive suggestion mini- 
mized the importance of the physical condition 
and emphasized the beauty of character, and 
197 



Hypnotism in Culture 

the husband was directed to love exdusively 
the moral and intellectual perfections of his 
wife. He was told that she could appreciate 
such love as few women could (not an exag- 
geration), that he was greatly blessed in his 
union with a woman of such superior mental 
parts, and he was assured that he would be 
happj with her as never before, because his 
happiness would henceforth be based on a 
more exalted regard than mere admiration of 
physical charms. Three days later my pa- 
tient called and stated that he had found a 
new and unexpected pleasure in companion- 
ship with his wife, that the disfigured face 
no longer haunted him, and that he was hap- 
pier than he had been for years. 

Other persons who have been referred to 
me for treatment suffered from delusions of 
having committed the unpardonable sin, 
homicidal and suicidal monomanias, convic- 
tions of inability to perform simple acts 



Imagination 

like boarding a street-car or reaching after a 
desired object, apparently due to a severance 
of connection between motor impulses and 
the channels of discharge. Among my pa- 
tients have been persons apparently well 
who could not cross the threshold and go out 
into the street, who could not wash and dress 
themselves, who were the victims of imagi- 
nary love affairs, who could not fulfil literary 
contracts because of inhibitory influences 
difficult to explain from a mere psychological 
stand-point. The subject is often aware that 
the imperative notions are morbid, that he is 
the dupe of delusions, and that they must 
ultimately land him in Queer Street, but 
he cannot control them. He may be of amia- 
ble disposition, and yet be haunted with an 
impulse to pick up a hatchet and kill some- 
body. I have such a case at present; the 
patient, who contracted the diseased inclina- 
tion from reading of a similar case in a news- 
199 



Hypnotism in Culture 

paper, recognizes the wrongness of it, and is 
able to resist it, but it has so far taken pos- 
session of his mind as to render him unable to 
discharge his duties as book-keeper. To 
quote a sufferer's words : " When a person 
cannot face a fellow-being without such ter- 
rible manifestations of guilt, hatred, and 
weakness depicted upon his face, when at 
heart he is innocent and nobly inclined, his 
very soul revolts within him '' ; and yet he 
is constrained to entertain the unwelcome 
impulse. 

It is not unusual for nervously depressed 
subjects to imagine that they have incurred 
the enmity of some one who is pursuing them 
with demoniacal intent, or to figure as the 
victims of morbid and sometimes laughable 
fears. An engineer, otherwise rational, told 
me that his left eye is affected as the result 
of a slight injury received three years ago, 
and he believes he is going to be blind, al- 
200 



rmagination 

though assured by oculists that his eyes are 
normal and his vision is perfect. It is his 
habit to carry a vest-pocket mirror with which 
to examine the suspected pupil at every con- 
venient opportunity. " Without my mir- 
ror/' he said, '^ I could not attend to my busi- 
ness; and if deprived of it for a length of 
time, I should go insane." A single treat- 
ment removed the delusion. An engraver 
reported that his nose turned red whenever 
he went out into the air. The imaginary 
annoyance rendered him so miserable that 
he could not attend to his work, and in con- 
sequence meditated suicide. A third ap- 
plicant for relief is harried by a dread of 
excessive salivary secretion. A few years 
ago he contracted catarrh, began to worry 
about breathing dust into his throat, and 
formed the habit of expectorating freely in 
order to expel offending particles that were 
supposed to be present. His mind has 
20 1 



Hypnotism in Culture 

dwelt so persistently on the necessity of 
constantly spitting that the salivary glands 
have become excessively sensitive to the ex- 
aggerated demands made upon the secreting 
tubules. Thought of the infirmity induces 
its immediate manifestation, and always on 
occasions most inopportune. The ever-pres- 
ent fear that the mouth will fill with water 
which must be swallowed or ejected has re- 
duced this subject to the condition of a 
nervous bankrupt, dead alike to the calls of 
pleasure and the demands of ambition. 

A lady who was referred to me for treat- 
ment by a well-known !New York surgeon 
imagined that a lemon-pit had lodged four 
years before in a pocket which had formed in 
her throat as the result of diphtheria, that 
the pit went to pieces but the hull remained 
to be disintegrated, and that the ^^ granulated 
pieces '' moved up and down in some mythical 
canal toward her ear and into the post-nasal 



Imagination 

space. The patient could not be argued out 
of the delusion. 

A man now under my care has for years 
been afraid that some calamity will befall 
him if left alone, and hence refuses to permit 
his wife to go out of his sight. He follows 
her about like a timorous child, and as a 
result has wrecked both his own business and 
hers. The central cause of mental disturb- 
ance is the morbid fear of solitude (mono- 
phobia). A prominent clergyman who sought 
advice, having suffered several times from 
vertigo, is tortured with apprehension lest 
an attack be precipitated while he is in the 
pulpit and a scene occur in his church. His 
usefulness is in consequence seriously lim- 
ited. 

Another patient is haunted by a coarse 

word which she saw scribbled on some fence. 

The word is ever on her tongue ; it has become 

the one subject of her waking thoughts and 

203 



Hypnotism in Culture 

her dreams, and she is tortured by the fear 
that she may lose self-control, utter the ob- 
scene expression in church or drawing-room, 
and be ostracized in consequence as a vulgar 
harridan. This is not insanity; it is likely 
to be the portion of any refined human being 
whose brain organs are overworked and are 
hence pathologically impressionable. Noth- 
ing but suggestion can immediately remove 
such impulses or fears, and restore happiness 
to a crushed life. 

Something akin to the last condition, a 
not infrequent accompaniment of nervous 
prostration, is the hearing of sinister voices 
that bid the commission of horrifying acts, 
call vile names as if through a mental tele- 
jihone, dictate terrifying messages, or doom 
to a wretched death. In vain the possessed 
mind strives to throw off the delusion ; drugs 
are of no avail, madness or suicide impends. 
Hallucinations of hearing, if allowed to per- 
204 



Infatuation 

sist, tend ultimately to become ineradicable. 
A nervous woman recently found her way to 
my office pursued by the audible voices of 
imaginary persecutors calling in her ears, 
" You are a sirloin steak ! You are a sirloin 
steak !'' '^ If this keeps on," she said, ^^ I 
shall come to believe it." Permanent mis- 
conception is insanity. 

Infatuation is a form of delusion the sug- 
gestionist is often called upon to treat. 
Young girls are not infrequently betrayed 
into an extravagant passion for men whom 
it is not lawful for them to marry ; and many 
a man has been freed by hypnotism from a 
foolish but uncontrollable feeling for a wom- 
an other than his wife. The following is a 
representative case: A young married wom- 
an, the mother of several children, wrote me 
in September last that her husband had be- 
come infatuated with a girl neighbor of 
eighteen, and was conducting himself in so 
205 



Hypnotism in Culture 

disloyal a manner that she contemplated 
suicide. His passion was beyond the control 
of his reason, and yet he evidently desired to 
be freed from it. Its object, a personal 
friend of his wife's, resented his attentions, 
and had resolved to put an end to his perse- 
cution by entering a convent, he having ex- 
torted a pledge from the girl that she would 
never marry. 

Self -disgust drove the man to my office in 
November. He was hypnotized, and five 
minutes of salutary inspiration switched him 
from the road to ruin. He was assured, in 
the face of his apprehension of such coward- 
ly and criminal behavior, that he could not 
ascend the stairs leading to the apartment 
of his inamorata, that he would in future 
meet her only as a passing acquaintance. A 
week later, the wife notified me that the sug- 
gestions had been effective, and that all was 
happy again in their home. 
206 



Mental Aberration 

Little is known as yet of the possibilities 
of hypnotism in the treatment of insanity 
with fixed dehisions. Whereas organic men- 
tal disease, like acute mania, epileptic insan- 
ity, or paresis, is not amenable to the power of 
the hypnotist, incipient insanity certainly 
may be cured if taken in time and managed 
with judgment. Hallucinations and ex- 
aggerated worries that are quite sure, unless 
removed, to gravitate into serious mental ab- 
erration may be held in abeyance by sugges- 
tive treatment faithfully repeated until the 
mind regains its balance. Asylums for the 
insane are filled with patients of the might- 
have-been-saved-if-opportunely-treated class. 

The following three cases of serious mental 
aberration reflect the author's limited experi- 
ence with true insanity and monomania : — 

Letitia M., a young girl of twenty-two, who 
three years before had consulted clairvoy- 
ants regarding a love affaii^ and had since 
207 



Hypnotism in Culture 

been haunted by clairvoyant spectres eight 
inches in length, miniatures of well-known 
persons, who talked to her incessantly and 
muddled her brain, was taken from a private 
asylum where she had been treated for two 
years without results, and brought to my office 
one day in December, 1899. Clairvoyant de- 
mons accompanied her and perched them- 
selves on the picture-frames and bookcases 
in mocking attitudes. I seated myself op- 
posite the girl, took her hands in mine, 
and ordered her to look into my eyes. In 
&Ye minutes she was asleep, and the troubled 
mind was at rest. I then gave her the sug- 
gestion that I had frightened the figures 
away, and that I would go with her in spirit 
and keep them from annoying her. Her 
aunt, who took her that afternoon to 'New 
Haven, reported that Letitia was natural the 
remainder of the day, took luncheon at one 
of the New York hotels, and was perfectly 
208 



Mental Aberration 

normal, not once referring to clairvoyants 
between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m., when the delu- 
sion began to return. The next day the re- 
port was : '^ She does the dishes, helps her 
sister with the table, and takes care of her 
bedroom, but when she has any time to her- 
self she sits down in a rocking-chair and 
throws her head back with a jerk, looks into 
a corner, and keeps talking to imaginary 
clairvoyants and they to her. You would 
think she would jerk her head off the way she 
throws it about. We try to get her to look 
at pictures or books, but she will not do any- 
thing but sit in the chair and look for the 
clairvoyants." 

This was certainly a most encouraging 
result, when it is remembered that the girl 
had been treated by experts in insanity for 
two years with no improvement of her symp- 
toms. After the second treatment a con- 
trary spirit developed, and she acted like a 
o 209 



Hypnotism in Culture 

stubborn child, refusing to take the brain 
food that had been prescribed. " She de- 
clares that the doctor's eyes are with her, and 
she wants to keep them with her, for then she 
will be all right." The suggestion had been 
that when the clairvoyants sought to annoy 
her she would see my eyes and find in them 
sympathy and strength. All this was favor- 
able, as there was less clairvoyant and more 
general obstinacy. Could the treatment 
have been continued, I am constrained to 
believe Letitia M. might have become sane 
on the clairvoyant question. Her relatives, 
expecting a sudden and miraculous cure, tired 
of bringing her to l^ew York. 

The second case was that of Mrs. B., who 
was tormented day and night by the janitor 
of the apartment-house in which she lived. 
He called her vile names through an imagi- 
nary telephone, and threatened her with sick- 
ness and death. The delusion was fixed ; she 

2IO 



Mental Aberration 

could not be reasoned out of it. Mrs. B. 
was easily hypnotized, and told that the tele- 
phone-wire was cut, and that her tormentor 
could therefore no longer secure access to her. 
She left my office on three separate occasions 
greatly elated and unattended by voices. 
The suggestions carried for thirty-six hours, 
w^hen repairs to the telephone-line gave her 
persecutor opportunity to resume his exasper- 
ating communications. In this and in the pre- 
ceding case the suggestions should have been 
renewed the moment the delusions reappear- 
ed, and persisted in on this principle until 
a satisfactory experiment had been made. 
My expectation would be that the intervals 
of normal mentality would lengthen until 
sanity should be finally established. 

The third case is the most interesting of 
all, because it teaches what may be accom- 
plished by wholesome treatment of this kind, 
with a superlatively discouraging case, in the 

211 



Hypnotism in Culture 

short period of two weeks. Mrs. E., aged 
thirty, who had been bred in an atmosphere 
of refinement and piety but was unhappily 
married early in life, became degenerate, 
and after the death of her husband had re- 
turned to her family, irascible, noisy, abusive, 
and profane. She had homicidal mania 
coupled with sexual perversion, and was 
drinking a pint of laudanum a day, with the 
usual demoralizing result. On December 
14th I was sent for to hypnotize her in a pri- 
vate hospital, where for months she had been 
watched by nurses and physicians night and 
day. Pursuing the same method I adopted 
with Letitia M., I soon succeeded in turning 
my violent patient into a perfect cataleptic, 
as plastic in my hands as wax. The sugges- 
tions given had reference destructively to the 
banishment of all compromising thoughts, 
evil words, homicidal tendencies, and person- 
al abuse; constructively, to domestic occupa- 



Amnesia 

tions and personal cleanliness. The resident 
physician reported on the day following that 
Mrs. E. had been very quiet for three hours 
after treatment, and then had slept for seven 
hours. The following day she was quieter 
and more sensible than at any time since en- 
tering the hospital, with strong hopes as to 
her recovery. All bad habits had been aban- 
doned. Twice during the following ten days 
Mrs. E. was brought to my office, and the 
suggestions were emphatically repeated. The 
improvement was so marked that her brother 
insisted that she should visit him in the West, 
and the last week in December she went to 
Ohio alone in a Pullman car, remaining per- 
fectly normal in transit. The only bad 
symptom that persists is an occasional dis- 
play of temper. 

In certain forms of amnesia, or loss of 
memory, things which the objective self ap- 
pears absolutely to have forgotten may be 
213 



Hypnotism in Culture 

recalled by the suggestible subpersonal self 
and flashed upon the waking consciousness 
through the instrumentality of suggestion. 
Sudden failure of memory, loss of conscious- 
ness of personal identity, may result from 
nervous shock, severe illness, or extrinsic poi- 
sons. A lady was brought to myofiice in June, 
1899, suffering from acute melancholia and 
apparently absolute loss of memory, as the 
result of a crushing humiliation. She did 
not know who she was ; she failed to recognize 
her children, husband, and friends, and could 
not call them by name. She took no interest 
in anything, and explained her condition by 
stating that when she awoke in the morning 
it seemed as if all her faculties did not awake. 
Suggestions were given to this patient that 
she would and did know herself and her chil- 
dren, that she would return to her home 
and call them by name that afternoon, and 
that her interest in her surroundings would 
214 



Amnesia 

be revived. On awakening her, I handed her 
a carnation, which she accepted with a smile, 
carried to her nose^ and admired conspicuous- 
ly. She told me who she was, called her chil- 
dren bj name that very day, and began to 
busy herself about household duties, display- 
ing her old-time skill as a pastry cook, and 
her interest as a housewife. All this aston- 
ished her relatives, for she had sat for months 
like a demented woman, and had even been 
treated in an asylum without avail. Since 
the hypnotization in June, her memory has 
gradually returned. Lapsed experiences 
and lost self -recognition are thus recoverable 
by suggestive treatment. 

Amnesia has many causes. When perma- 
nent, it marks degeneration of the brain ; it is 
often an accompaniment of senile dementia. 
The writer has been asked whether such de- 
mentia with its impending amnesia can be 
aborted by suggestion. 
215 



Hypnotism in Culture 

A lady upward of sixty presented herself 
in the autumn of 1899, oppressed with fears 
that her old age, like that of her mother, 
deceased at eighty-four, would be character- 
ized by senile dementia, which she knew to 
be hereditary — with its attendant lessened 
mentality, failure of memory, impairment 
of judgment and moral feeling. Her mind 
had so long and so constantly fed upon such 
thoughts that her automatic self had accepted 
the suggestion. Indecision was marked, 
mother-wit was out at elbows, interpretation 
of duty was abnormal. The patient asked 
that her mind might be put in control of 
those organic changes in the brain that cause 
progressive mental enfeeblement. Her de- 
sire, as she expressed it, was to " die with 
dignity '' ; and the perplexity she unwitting- 
ly proposed to me for disentanglement was; 
How far can a mental attitude govern the 
physical health of the brain in extreme age, 
216 



Senile Dementia 

and predispose to a death by euthanasia, so 
pleasantly alluded to by the psalmist in his 
injunction to " Mark the perfect man and 
behold the upright, for the end of that man 
is peace " ? Is arterio-sclerosis (thickening 
of the arterial coats), which induces the fault 
of brain nutrition, controllable by the sub- 
liminal self? This subject was reduced to 
a condition of hypnosis which she described 
as a state of partial consciousness accom- 
panied with a feeling that her body was a 
pile of velvet. The suggestion was communi- 
cated that she would die by inches, would 
not grow old an object of pity or ridicule; 
but that the arterial channels in the sub- 
stance of the brain would retain their normal 
diameters, that the blood currents would 
flow in undiminished strength with advanc- 
ing age, and hence that there would be no 
failure of brain nutrition, and she would in 
consequence remain in possession of her 
217 



Hypnotism in Culture 

faculties and enjoy to the last the love and 
respect of those about her. These sugges- 
tions were given at the request of the pa- 
tient, a phenomenally intelligent woman, and 
they will be repeated as many times per 
annum as opportunity offers. In the in- 
tervals, the same thoughts will often be self- 
suggested. If the subliminal self can be 
made to regulate the vital processes that are 
taking place daily in the living body — the 
peristaltic action of the intestines, the diges- 
tive functions, the storing of fat in the 
cellule - adipose structures, circulation, in- 
nervation, ovulation — who will designate 
the limit of control ? And why may not a 
determined position of the objective mind, 
transferred to the subjective self, abort, by 
the natural action of that secondary self, a 
threatened organic disease, or rob old age 
of its terrors ? Determination never to ad- 
mit the existence of a suspected degenerative 
218 



Senile Dementia 

process has prolonged many a life. The 
philosophy of the mental operation is patent ; 
and if it can be successfully applied, as the 
writer believes it can, to the causes of that 
malnutrition on which depends senile de- 
mentia, the age of " sweet or happy dying," 
as the Greeks characterized it (evdavao-ia)^ 
bids fair to return. Did men live as the 
Deity has prescribed — temperately, un- 
selfishly, loving their neighbors as them- 
selves — there would be known no other kind 
of death. But since we come into the world 
burdened with an inheritance of what St. 
Paul designated a tendency to fail in well- 
doing (dfiapTia)j which renders it difficult 
or impossible to do the good we would, 
and easy to do the evil we would not, as- 
suredly it is justifiable to combat that ten- 
dency with its accompanying physical drift 
toward premature cerebral degeneration by 
appeal to the real self or spiritual part. 
219 



EDUCATIONAL USE OF HYP- 
NOTIC SUGGESTION. ITS 
VALUE IN THE TRAINING 
OF ERRATIC, BACKWARD, 
AND UNMANAGEABLE CHIL- 
DREN 



EDUCATIONAL USE OF HYP- 
NOTIC SUGGESTION. ITS 
VALUE IN THE TRAINING 
OF ERRATIC, BACKWARD, 
AND UNMANAGEABLE CHIL^ 
DREN 

TACTFUL suggestion has power to exalt 
the intellectual as well as the ethico- 
spiritual nature. The development of mind 
is no less an hypnotic possibility than the 
betterment of morals. In fact, the moral 
exaltation characteristic of hypnosis is ac- 
companied with a rise in intellectual dignity 
and power. Potential is converted into act- 
ual energy; and the hypnotized subject de- 
lights in the consciousness of awakened 
223 



Hypnotism in Culture 

susceptibility and command. Differences in- 
duced by objective education are obliterated ; 
and the fundamental endowments of that 
finer spiritual organ in which under God w^e 
have our highest being — endowments con- 
ferred by Deity on all human souls without 
favor and without stint — dominate the in- 
tellectual life. The divine image is supreme 
in the man, and creative communication on 
the broadest lines and the most exalted planes 
becomes possible. Hypnotic suggestion is 
but inspiration. Not only does the subject 
share the latent knowledge, but he borrows 
as well the mental tone of the operator. His 
memory becomes preternaturally impressible. 
The principles of science, of language, of 
music, of art, are quickly appropriated and 
permanently retained for post-hypnotic ex- 
pression through appropriate channels. Con- 
fidence in talent is acquired ; and embarrass- 
ment, confusion, all admission of inferiority, 

224 



In the Training of Children 

are banished from the objective life — by 
placing the superior self in control. 

To accomplish his part in the work of in- 
tellectual uplift J the hypnotizer must be a 
person of liberal education, broad views, and 
pronounced literary and scientific convic- 
tions. He must be a sincere believer in his 
own suggestions. Mental reservation is 
fatal. I^ebular knowledge is of little avail. 
Tact, patience, and erudition, are the three 
factors indispensable to success. 

The experiments of the author in creative 
communication embrace cases of backward 
and erratic children, disequilibration, voice 
culture, the development of musical talent, 
and the inspiration of writers and actresses. 

Many children are contrary, disobedient, 
troublesome, or destructive to an extreme. 
They are abnormally ungovernable. Kindly 
persuasive measures, the line upon line, pre- 
cept upon precept treatment, are alike ineffi- 
p 225 



Hypnotism in Culture 

cacious. Cruel corporal punishment is equal- 
ly impotent to accomplish reform. They are 
helplessly graceless or wicked because they 
have come into the world under the spell of 
some heteroclite impulse which compels acts 
they are not responsible for. In some in- 
stances the tendency is distinctly hereditary. 
I have been asked to treat a boy of six years 
who is afflicted with an irresistible passion to 
hurl stones at passers-by, through windows, 
into carriages, etc. His mother at a corre- 
sponding age exhibited the same tendency in 
an exaggerated degree. The son cannot 
withhold his hand so long as a stone is in 
sight. He is deaf alike to the solicitations 
and mandates of those he loves with all the 
fulness of his child's heart. He must per- 
force obey the resistless inherited prompting, 
and is happy only with a cobble or a brick- 
bat in his hand. He is without will-power 
to resist the instigation of his disordered sub- 
226 



In the Training of Children 

jective self; nor can that will-power be cre- 
ated and reinforced by the ordinary means 
employed in the case of children who ^' know 
better " and yet are deliberate wrong-doers. 
How careful are parents to guard a child 
against the evils of heredity in physical dis- 
ease. Why should they not be equally con- 
cerned to discover the appropriate treatment 
in the case of maladies that are mental or 
moral in their nature ? Fear, the usual agent 
of reform, is assuredly valueless. Fear- 
thought, so far as the control of sinners hy 
force of birth is concerned, but invites fail- 
ure. 

Other children are chance black - sheep, 
bearing no resemblance in their unfortunate 
traits to parents, grandparents, or remoter 
ancestors. In all such cases of inherited or 
accidental mental deformity, castigation is 
the remedy of fools. As well whip a child 
for multiple fingers, knock-knee, or spinal 
227 



Hypnotism in Culture 

paralysis. The warped mind can be straight- 
ened and strengthened only by judicious sug- 
gestion; there is no other known instrumen- 
tality through which it can be speedily and 
permanently modified. 

There are children who are unnatural- 
ly stupid, of sluggish intellect, born with- 
out the ordinary ability to concentrate 
thought or rivet attention, with defective 
memories, easily confused, embarrassingly 
self-conscious, so that the mind becomes a 
blank under the pressure of a necessity for 
reflection, or if thoughts are there, the vocal 
mechanism refuses to express them. For 
these conditions, as well as for habitual in- 
dolence, disinclination to exertion, and cow- 
ardice, hypnotism is the philosophical treat- 
ment. Where medication, moral influences, 
institutional discipline, change of scene and 
companionships, are of no avail, carefully 
directed suggestion in the hypnotic state, if 



In the Training of Children 

confidently persevered in, is, humanly speak- 
ing, sure to awaken intellectual perception, 
impart mental alertness, improve the memory 
conditions, and substitute self-reliance for 
difiidence and timidity. 

A troubled mother writes to inquire wheth- 
er a child of six years can be satisfactoril;^ 
influenced by hypnotic suggestion — ^^ a sen- 
sitive, nervous, high-strung, exceedingly af- 
fectionate boy, but cursed with a painful 
lack of courage in his contact with other boys. 
This leads to a perpetual persecution by his 
companions, besides being in itself deplor- 
able inasmuch as it is a trait indicating lack 
of manliness. By nature he is exceptionally 
truthful ; but at times I suspect this supreme 
timidity may lead to deception through fear 
of consequences. Do you think this defect 
can be successfully overcome by hypnotic 
suggestion ?" 

My reply to such an inquiry is that the 
229 



Hypnotism in Culture 

child as pictured is a perfect subject for 
hypnotic treatment, which will convert the 
crj-haby into a resolute, manly boy, the un- 
happy, cringing coward into a model of 
bravery and truth. 

On June 9th, Howard P., aged ten, was sent 
to my office by his mother, who declared that, 
in consequence of his destructive impulses, 
eternal restlessness, flagrant disobedience, de- 
fiance of her authority, and developing un- 
truthfulness, life was not worth the living. 
The child was utterly incorrigible. Neither 
parents nor teachers could prevail in the least 
against the massive tendency to wrong-doing. 
Correction by precept and merciless castiga- 
tion had utterly failed to check the vicious 
propensities. The boy was hypnotized, and 
a suggestion carefully formulated to the 
effect that he was no longer disrespectful, un- 
truthful, disobedient, neglectful of his les- 
sons; but that he would be affectionate and 
230 



In the Training of Children 

attentive to his mother's requests, would win 
her love, with the regard of the family and his 
teacher, by a cheerful service and a career 
of wholesome activity. A sudden change of 
attitude was noticeable. The exhibition of 
kindliness in the home where before there 
had been nothing but ugliness and defiance, 
and habits of thought-concentration in school 
instead of habits of rambling, was most grati- 
fying to all interested. As hypnotism in 
such cases as this is of the nature of an edu- 
cation, it must be persisted in for months 
until the desired trend is given permanently 
to the mental and moral energies. 

The most unpromising child that has come 
under my observation is Freddie D., aged 
twelve years, who was hysterically insane 
from the abuse of cigarettes when his mother 
brought him to me for treatment in March, 
1900. This boy had been smoking from thir- 
ty to fifty cigarettes a day, with the usual 
231 



Hypnotism in Culture 

consequences. I was asked to educate out of 
vice and nervous bankruptcy a liar, an in- 
corrigible thief, a master of profanity and ob- 
scenity, an adept in the schoolery of the 
streets, a colepixy at home, and designated 
by his teacher as " the biggest devil she had 
ever seen.'' Ten treatments were required, 
to change this nature. The cigarettes were 
first attacked, and Freddie soon found it im- 
possible to take a single puff without paying 
the suggested penalty of nausea and vomiting. 
The deviltry coembodied in him entirely 
through this habit was then disposed of 
piecemeal. His temper gradually improved ; 
and in the course of two months, he became 
respectful of parental authority, kind to his 
little sister, affectionate to his mother, dis- 
inclined to truancy, and both well-behaved 
and industrious at school. 

In other instances, no difficulty has been 
encountered in awakening slumbering affec- 
232 



In the Training of Children 

tions, creating a desire for knowledge, in- 
spiring respect for parents and elders, and 
even in compelling a courteous anticipation 
of their wants and wishes on the part of ap- 
parently thoughtless and inattentive or un- 
grateful and reprobate children. In the case 
of young persons who possess ability but not 
application, the results of hypnotic training 
seem almost miraculous. 



HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION IN 
THE INSPIRATION OF WRIT- 
ERS, AND OF MEN AND WOM- 
EN OF THE STAGE 



HYNPOTIC SUGGESTION IN 
THE INSPIRATION OF WRIT- 
ERS, AND OF MEN AND WOM- 
EN OF THE STAGE 

THE writer has had under treatment dur- 
ing the spring a number of persons 
who sought increased powers of attention 
and concentration, as well as several ladies 
who are making a profession of fiction writ- 
ing. To these latter were imparted in hyp- 
nosis, first, a knowledge of the canons of nar- 
ration, viz., the law of selection, which limits 
the story-teller to appropriate characteristic 
or individual circumstances; the law of suc- 
cession, which governs the disposal of the 
selected incidents in the order of a climax; 
and the law of unity ; — secondly, of the laws 
237 



Hypnotism in Culture 

of construction in the case of the novel, its 
functions and technic, and its legitimate 
material. 

This philosophy is readily grasped, as- 
similated, and utilized in post - hypnotic 
creation; and the mode of instruction puts 
out of countenance the conventional wrest- 
ling with the precepts of a text-book. In 
the light of instantaneous apprehension, bar- 
renness gives place to richness of association, 
the earnest thought and honest toil of the old 
method to a surprising facility, disinclina- 
tion to select details to zest in appropriating 
whatever is available. Opportunity and 
mood are thus made to coincide, and the 
subject spontaneously conforms to the eter- 
nal principles of style. Under the influence 
of such inspiration, rapid progress has been 
made in the chosen field of authorship. 

To the many who have desired and secured 
through hypnotic treatment accentuated 
238 



Inspiration of Writers, Etc. 

powers of attention, concentration, reproduc- 
tive memory, and imagination, the following 
typical suggestions were given : You are now 
in a position where you can perceive your 
mental faculties in all their strength and 
beauty, where you can appreciate their har- 
monious adjustment in a mighty unity. You 
apprehend your power to use them to the 
highest advantage. Hence you will retain 
and assimilate the best of the good you hear 
and read, so that you can exploit it in con- 
versation and discussion. And, above all, 
there will be no embarrassment, no admis- 
sion of inferiority in the presence of others, 
for you realize your mental equality. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe is said to have 
written Uncle Toms Cabin in a subcon- 
scious state. It is related that upon inquiry 
from her publishers as to when they might 
expect a new instalment of copy, she was 
accustomed to say, devoutly, " The Lord only 
239 



Hypnotism in Culture 

knows; wait till I am inspired." To a 
dreamy non-observant patient having similar 
literary visions while half asleep, which van- 
ish as she wakes, the suggestion has been 
given, with marked results, that whatever 
comes to her spontaneously in a state of 
reverie is hers permanently, and will find 
outlet in some piece of literature of her own 
creation. 

Actresses resort to hypnotic treatment for 
accessions of self-confidence and for inspira- 
tion. The inspiration of an actress while 
in an hypnotic condition — the quickening of 
her faith in her powers of impersonation, 
the elimination of all admission of inferior- 
ity even to the stars of her profession, the 
emphasizing of her native dignity and grace, 
the pushing of her individuality into bold 
relief — is an easy feat to a suggestionist of 
strong personality who understands the deli- 
cate machinery of the human mind and the 
240 



Inspiration of Writers, Etc. 

laws of dramatic art. The response of the 
woman's soul to such suggestions with 
post - hypnotic import is followed by her 
speedy ascent to the heights of histrionic 
art, and by subsequent triumphs on the stage 
through an apprehension of her own death- 
less powers as revealed by the creative com- 
munication of her hypnotist. An actress 
once so inspired is inspired forever. In 
such cases, it is the practice of the writer 
to supplement the concluding suggestions 
with the assurance that the good work ac- 
complished can never be undone. 

These latest triumphs of suggestion must 
refute many theories of pedagogy that are 
taught in the colleges, and give accent to the 
philosophy of Milton, which based the con- 
ditions of success in teaching on the person- 
ality rather than on the method of the in- 
structor. 

Q 241 



HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION IN 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
VOICE AND OF MUSICAL 
TALENT 



HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION IN 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
VOICE AND OF MUSICAL 
TALENT 

IN^ cases of intelligent women who under- 
stand the philosophy of hypnotism and 
apply for assistance in their musical work, the 
suggestions are framed to meet the special 
needs of each individual. The subject is hyp- 
notized and told that the subliminal self is 
now in the ascendancy ; that it has demanded 
and secured an outlet of expression through 
the physical organism and the mortal mind ; 
that it will utter itself fearlessly, without 
diffidence, without thought of extraneous 
criticism, unerringly, feelingly, triumphant- 
ly; that in order to do this it has indued 
245 



Hypnotism in Culture 

the objective self with power to read music, 
to interpret the contents, and to render the 
thought of feeling through the medium of 
piano tones evoked by dexterous fingers. An 
improvement is at once noticed, marked by 
facility in interpreting new and difficult 
music, by a sureness and delicacy of touch, 
and, above all, by the acquisition of perfect 
confidence before an audience. Proficiency 
in piano-playing on the part of those who un- 
derstand the technic is assured in a com- 
paratively short time by suggestive instruc- 
tion of this nature. The automatic mind 
is gently wooed to the summits of soul life, 
where it becomes susceptible to inspiration 
and burns to launch itself, through music 
as a medium of artistic expression, into the 
objective Vv^orld. 

That such results can be reached by a per- 
son who is himself without musical ability 
proves hypnotic suggestion to be more than 
246 



Development of Voice 

a mere imparting of knowledge or skill 
possessed by the operator. It is a true in- 
spiration, an appeal to the soul regnant, a 
kindling of its deepest and sweetest emotions, 
a materializing of its highest aspirations, a 
summoning into action of its resistless do- 
minion. If this inspiration be effected on 
psychological principles by a personality con- 
genitally qualified and judiciously trained, 
the translation of latent into actual talent 
will be unattended with any danger of con- 
verting the subject into a soulless automaton. 
The conscious perception of genius, and the 
conscious appreciation of the worth of each 
performance from the stand-point of technic, 
will not be taken from the soul that is oper- 
ating on the higher plane of apprehension; 
but the mesmerizee will remain in the post- 
hypnotic state an intelligent interpreter and 
renderer of music. 

A number of singers have had recourse to 
247 



Hypnotism in Culture 

hypnotic treatment for vocal awkwardness 
and sensitiveness to changes of weather. A 
representative case is that of Miss D., a vocal- 
ist who applied in December for relief from 
hoarseness that supervened on the slightest 
provocation and interfered with her singing, 
a thickened condition of the vocal cords, and 
a morbid expectation of failure. Miss D, 
was hypnotized and assured that atmospheric 
conditions would have no effect on her vocal 
cords ; that she was not watching for failure 
because the thermometer rose or fell, or the 
humidity in the air varied; that her voice 
would be smooth, clear, and velvety through 
the whole register; that she would trill and 
shake with precision; and that vocal grace 
had supplanted voice-awkwardness. These 
suggestions were repeated on two subsequent 
occasions, with the effect desired. It is to 
be noted that this singer had a finely devel- 
oped chest, and that the tone-producing blast 
248 



Development of Voice 

determined a sufficient amplitude of vibra- 
tion in the vocal cords. On January 27th, 
the patient stated that she wished to sing 
the " Stabat Mater " in church on the follow- 
ing Sunday, and desired the power to render 
the piece effectively. She was accordingly 
hypnotized and told that her voice would 
be responsive to the demands made upon it 
by her genius ; that she possessed a perfect 
laryngeal ins;!rument of voice expression, 
and that on the occasion in question she would 
handle with dexterity the vocal cords, laryn- 
geal cartilages, and muscles involved. As 
a result, she rendered the " Stabat Mater '^ 
to her perfect satisfaction. 

On January 31st, Miss D. reported with 
some bronchial trouble. The suggestions 
were to the effect that the secretions of the 
bronchi, trachea, and larjmx were subject to 
the decree of her subliminal self, and were 

normal — that the nerve filaments were in- 
249 



Hypnotism in Culture 

sensible to wind and weather, and hence the 
secretions would not dry and the voice be- 
come husky. So with a perfect laryngeal 
instrument naturally lubricated by healthy 
secretions, vocal grace and agility were as- 
sured. She was then told to sleep for ten 
minutes, happy in the apprehension of her 
great endowment and in her recognition of 
control over all the physical procedures that 
have to do with voice production. She 
awoke at the desi'gnated time, ch -arful, buoy- 
ant, and eager to put into execution her new- 
ly apprehended powers. It is needless to 
say that they have stood the test 



COMPULSORY HYPNOTISM 



COMPULSORY HYPNOTISM 

THE experience of the author in the field 
of compulsory hypnotism, with patients 
automatically refractory or purposely defiant, 
has been deemed of sufficient interest to merit 
notice in this volume. When such a case is 
presented, and either objective acquiescence 
is implied or authority is secured to hypnotize 
against the subject's will, it is my practice to 
call at the residence or hotel at bedtime, in- 
ject sufficient morphia hypodermaticallyto in- 
sure the establishment of my control, and then 
ask him to retire. By the time he is en- 
sconced in bed, an agreeable sensation has be- 
gim to diffuse itself over his body, sometimes 
described as a reluctance to move, sometimes 
as indefinitely pleasant, occasionally as a feel- 
253 



Hypnotism in Culture 

ing of weakness. There follows a period of 
heart stimulation and cerebral excitement, 
the mind becoming superlatively active. But 
in the course of fifteen minutes to a half- 
hour, if the dose of morphia be carefully 
gauged, the pulse diminishes in frequency, 
respiration slows and shallows, the eyes that 
are fixed upon the influencing diamond begin 
to close, and the patient shortly drops off into 
a singularly responsive sleep. Resistance, 
planned or spontaneous, is at an end; and I 
am free deliberately and methodically to un- 
rubbish the soul. The fusion of indescrib- 
able calm and alertness in the mental condi- 
tion induced by hypnotic influence super- 
added to morphia effects, implies the highest 
degree of receptivity and hence of suggesti- 
bility. What is said in the interval between 
somnolence and sopor, with feeling and the 
courage of conviction — assuming that it be 
along the line of mental and moral exalta- 
254 



Compulsory Hypnotism 

tion — is unquestioningly accepted. The soul 
of the sleeper is fired with manly determina- 
tion; an abhorrence of all compromising 
thoughts and actions takes shape; and the 
divine within the man summons the objective 
nature into successful revolt against all in- 
clination to evil-doing. 

The subject is thus effectively roused from 
his moral coma, and ethical apathy is trans- 
formed into ethical energy, or capacity for 
performing worthy deeds. Such energy seeks 
immediate outlet in the activities of a moral 
life. The weaknesses of the past are for- 
gotten, vice loses its attractions, and the in- 
spired soul seeks to make reparation for its 
shortcomings by an exaggerated loyalty to the 
spirit of the moral law. 

The young man who has regarded with con- 
tempt a father's advice and a mother's love 
becomes, after treatment, the incarnation of 
filial reverence and affection. The liar looks 
255 



Hypnotism in Culture 

his interlocutor in the face and speaks the 
truth without regard to consequences. The 
thief parts with all inclination to appropriate 
what is not his. The libertine accepts the 
white life. Human saprophytes that thrive 
on social rottenness are not wholly destitute 
of moral chlorophyl. In the worst of char- 
acters there lies imbedded virgin gold that 
may be found for the seeking and wrought 
into exquisite shapes. 

Among a number of moral imbeciles and 
perverts subjected to this compulsory treat- 
mentj I present a single case which repre- 
sents that type of young man who deliberate- 
ly pawns his soul to the devil for what he 
feigns to regard as a little pleasure, and in- 
vites a harlot to write the bill of sale — un- 
covenable in the presence of virtue — lost to 
the pleadings of affection, wine-bibber, per- 
jurer, gambler, petty thief, recklessly re- 
solved never to hunt the clean shoe in his mad 
256 



Compulsory Hypnotism 

chase throiigh a modern Cockaigne. My ex- 
periments with this unfortunate — ^whose par- 
ents represent the highest type of morality, 
but whose own moral organs remained in an 
embryonic state up to the time of his treat- 
ment — conclusively prove that hypnotic sug- 
gestion may undam the currents of ethico- 
spiritual impulse in such a life, and flood it 
with a stream of moral energy — not uncreate, 
but until the hour of inspiration wholly po- 
tential. 

In other words, a person may be hypnotized 
against his will and compelled to take upon 
himself a changed nature in response to ap- 
propriate suggestions. The bad may be 
made good despite their deliberate determi- 
nation to continue in the clutches of sin. 

An indispensable condition of permanent 
cure in such a case as I have pictured is ex- 
emption from temptation until the m^oral 
character is completely reconstructed. Pre- 
R 257 



Hypnotism in Culture 

mature contact with vice on the part of a mor- 
al convalescent is all but sure to precipitate 
a dangerous relapse. And herein lies the 
difficulty of managing the moral imbecile 
while under treatment. Collisions between 
the accumulating force of the suggestions and 
all stimulants of the congenital passion must 
be averted during the formative period of a 
contrary cortex habit. The rule of ethical 
tare and tret should be liberally applied in 
calculating the allowances necessary to be 
made for the gross character-weight that rep- 
resents an evolution of the moral outfit al 
birth. 

Obstinate insomnia has in the experience 
of the author been successfully treated by a 
combination of the morphia and hypnotic in- 
fluence, where neither by itself was success- 
ful. The suggestions, which were objective- 
ly inaudible to the patient, directed him to 
rise from his couch, undress, retire to bed, 
258 



Compulsory Hypnotism 

and sleep iintil morning. These instruc- 
tions were literally obeyed, and forced the 
beginning of the end in an acute attack of 
neurasthenia. 

It is hardly necessary to add that compul- 
sory hypnotization can safely be effected only 
by conscientious physicians. The sciolists of 
hypno-science are excluded from this field of 
undreamed - of promise. Familiarity with 
morphia effects and the means of controlling 
them when extreme; a caution that is born 
only of professional knowledge; and a real- 
ization that idiosyncrasy (individual suscep- 
tibility or antipathy) may be encountered 
where least expected — are of right demanded 
in the operator by the patient or his legal 
guardian. 

Some subjects are uninfluenceable by limit 
doses of morphia ; in others alarming symp- 
toms follow the administration of a minimum 
dose. Whereas a half-grain has in one re- 
259 



Hypnotism in Culture 

corded instance proved fatal to an adult, and 
a drop of laudanum has imperilled the life of 
a babe, the author had under his care one 
young man whose daily allowance had been 
sixty grains of morphia and a lady who drank 
a pint of laudanum every twenty-four hours. 
As is well kno^vn, the habitual use of these 
drugs lessens susceptibility to their action. 

It is thus incumbent on the physician-sug- 
gestionist thoroughly to acquaint himself with 
any possible idiosyncrasy in his subject be- 
fore resorting to compulsory hypnotism. 

Other drugs than morphia have uniform- 
ly proved unavailing, in the hands of the 
author, for the compulsory induction of hyp- 
nosis. Full doses of trional and hyoscine 
merely increase the alertness of a mind which 
is non-susceptible to outputs of personality. 
An unhypnotizable subject recently bicycled 
away from my office as unaffected by thirty 
grains of trional as if it had been flour. 
260 



CONCLUSIONS REACHED 



CONCLUSIONS REACHED 

THE results obtained by the author in 
treating mental defects and moral obli- 
quity by suggestion justify the following con- 
elusions : — 

Hypnotism in proper hands may be ap- 
plied successfully in restoring degenerates 
and reforming the criminal classes. 

Addiction to drugs and stimulants, im- 
moral impulses, habits of lying and stealing, 
dangerous delusions and dominant ideas, 
suicidal and homicidal mania, erratic and 
unmanageable dispositions in children, lack 
of reverence for superiors, and general in- 
corrigibility — are curable by hypnotic sugges- 
tion. I have no hesitation in adding to this 
263 



Hypnotism in Culture 

list the passion for gambling in adults, and 
the gambling mania so marked among Amer- 
ican school-boys as well as the Arabs of the 
street. 

Hypnotic suggestion is adapted to the 
treatment of acute amnesia or loss of mem- 
ory, of melancholia, monomania, unballasted 
wits, and mild forms of insanity in their in- 
cipiency, where the attention of the patient 
can be fixed and his mind controlled so that 
it ceases to wander from image to image and 
from thought to thought — an indispensable 
condition of success in all cases. 

Stammering, stuttering, and similar 
speech defects, are amenable to hypnotic 
treatment. 

High purpose and noble endeavor may be 
substituted in character for carnal propen- 
sities and sordid aims, worthy ideals for 
bestial standards, intellectual brilliance and 
living interest for obtuseness and indiffer- 
264 



Conclusions Reached 

ence. Habits of thought concentration may 
be made to take the place of habits of ram- 
bling, ability to use grammatical English for 
uncertainty in syntax, a taste that approves 
elegance for an inclination to slang. 

Although the author firmly believes that 
the philanthropic reformer should know the 
worst he has to deal with, the frightful per- 
versions that have been modified or removed 
by hypnotic suggestion — perversions imply- 
ing moral disease and as uncontrollable by 
child, youth, or adult as an epileptic attack — 
cannot be appropriately described in these 
pages. Sufiice it to say that ungovernable 
abuses have been controlled, that patients 
have been obliqued from sexual manias which 
no appeal to self-respect, fear of physical or 
mental ruin, conscience, faith, or love, and 
which no use of drugs could subdue. ^Name- 
less aberrations have been displaced from 
young minds; and intellectual, moral, and 
265 



Hypnotism in Culture 

spiritual ideals substituted therefor. Most 
of the sexual perversion physicians encounter 
is the result of immoral instruction given by 
school-fellows. Hence, during the years that 
mark the change from childhood to puberty, 
young people should be watched v^^ith lynx- 
eyed solicitude. Ignorance or indifference 
in teachers is unpardonable. Evil habits 
acquired at school are likely to become fixed, 
to the permanent crippling of brain efficiency 
and the consequent interference with career. 
In many perverts, the will is stricken with im- 
potency, all power of resistance is destroyed, 
and unless the unfortunate subject can obtain 
outside psychic aid through suggestion in 
some form, he ultimately finds his way into 
the asylum, the prison, or the suicide's grave. 
Children, as a rule, are more impression- 
able than adults, and the fulfilment of sug- 
gestions given to them is more pronounced 
and more permanent. Here the result of 
266 



Conclusions Reached 

suggestion amounts practically to regenera- 
tion, moral perversity not having become 
fixed by the indulgence of years. 

A very important condition of success is 
the desire of the subject to be cured, or at 
least his acquiescence in the treatment. I 
have a private patient who began by stimu- 
lating with liquid peptonoids and ended with 
whiskey (not an unusual history, by the 
way), whom I endeavored to hypnotize 
without her knowledge and against her will 
— a procedure I have never attempted ex- 
cept in this one case, and heartily disapprove 
of. I yielded to the mother's entreaties and 
the attending physician's policy, and made 
the patient believe I was applying tests to 
her ocular muscles. Her objective opposi- 
tion was broken down, and she passed into 
the first stage of hypnosis — when suddenly 
it dawned upon her what I was attempting. 
She cried out, ^^ I believe you are trying to 
267 



Hypnotism in Culture 

mesmerize me/' sat up, and the spell was 
broken. 

While acquiescence in the treatment is es- 
sential, will-power has nothing to do with 
hypnotic suggestion, neither the will-power 
of the operator nor that of the subject. Pa- 
ralysis of the will, which is the hete noire of 
the popular mind, is inconceivable. The 
mesmerizee is inspired or empowered, as the 
case may be, and works out his own salvation 
in his own objective life without conscious 
effort of any kind — or, if the blacklisted 
thoughts or feelings should fugitively recur, 
it costs him no struggle to banish them. 
Above all, he is in no degree subject to an- 
other will. His superior self or personality 
is put in command; and he is then normal, 
happy, energetic, buoyant, without wishing or 
willing to be so. He simply cannot help it. 
And yet he is conscious of an uplift, sensible 
of a new control of himself, hy himself, for 
268 



Conclusions Reached 

himself — and glories in it. If skilfully dealt 
with, he is not converted into a mere automa- 
ton. 

The thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and 
moral status of the hypnotist are communi- 
cated most vividly and accurately to the sub- 
ject, whose mind becomes mysteriously tuned 
in unison with that of the operator. And 
herein lies the true danger of hypnotism — 
the injury potential to the mesmerizee. I 
have been startled by hearing patients 
tell me days after hypnotization of feelings 
and incentives to action of which I had said 
nothing, but which I knew to be in the back- 
ground of my consciousness at the time of 
treatment. An actress whom I was inspir- 
ing with confidence and preparing for her 
part, assured me on one occasion that she 
had experienced a remarkable change in hea* 
disposition and her attitude as regards the 
purity of the stage. She could not think 
269 



Hypnotism in Culture 

of engaging to a manager whose plajs were 
not above suspicion, and her newly adopted 
ideals were so exactly in conformity with my 
own that there could be no question regard- 
ing their source. The danger of exposure to 
moral soiling on the part of a sensitive wom- 
an in the hands of a coarse and unprincipled 
hypnotist needs no paragraph of warning. 
Of a young man whom I was treating for 
moral defect, and to whom I had said nothing 
objectively or subjectively of my ardent love 
for nature and her wild life, his mother 
writes : " P. has never been a lover of nature, 
but now he is deeply interested in trees, birds, 
flowers, etc. This to me is simply wonder- 
ful, as it proves how sensitive he is becoming 
to your influence, and that your thoughts are 
in a degree his thoughts.'' The time has in- 
deed come, as Maeterlinck predicted it would, 
when souls may know of each other without 
the intermediary of the senses. 
270 



Conclusions Reached 

Another essential is robust health, cheerful 
spirits, and freedom from agitation on the 
part of the operator. Anxious surmises, 
disturbing suspicions, preoccupation, the re- 
ception of unpleasant letters, seriously inter- 
fere with hypnotic influence. The most 
favorable mood has been described as a 
"wise passiveness." Undivided attention 
must be given to the work, especially at the 
first seance. After that, less force is, as a 
rule, required. Hypnotic power remits with 
remission of attention. Patients are con- 
scious of relaxation and reconcentration in 
an exhausted operator. One lady described 
my influence as having a perceptible " ebb 
and flow." The hypnotic force of an in- 
dividual is strengthened by regular exer- 
cise and weakened by excessive application. 
The treatment in one day of more than 
three or four such cases as have been de- 
scribed in the foregoing chapters is un- 
271 



Hypnotism in Culture 

fair both to the siiggestionist and to his pa- 
tients. 

Studied gentleness tempered with firmness 
is a sine qua non. Shouting, coarse- voiced, 
unsympathetic hypnotists have their labor 
for their pains. All harshness, severity, 
or brutality, either on the part of the opera- 
tor, or of friends and relatives before or after 
the hypnotizing, interferes with success. 
The treatment must be of the suaviter in 
modo fortiter in re nature — persuasive rather 
than peremptory, constructive as well as de- 
structive. And in proportion as the sugges- 
tions are concrete and incisive, the effect 
sought will be secured. Under certain cir- 
cumstances persons can be brought forcibly 
into rapport — a refractory child by an intro- 
ductory reprimand, or, if need be, thrashing ; 
a hardened criminal, objectively antagonistic, 
by a staggering hypodermic of morphia. 
Hypnotism might play a great part in the 
272 



Conclusions Reached 

tracing of crime, ^o man should be con- 
victed on confession wrung from him under 
hypnotic influence ; but if he coiild be forced 
to confess facts that would serve as clews and 
make possible the absolute proving of guilt, 
the practice would be valuable. Any man 
thus incriminating himself should have the 
benefit of state's evidence, on the theory of a 
duplex personality. 

Too much should not be attempted at one 
treatment. Better results are obtained by 
confining the suggestions to a single main 
thought. Success usually attends not more 
than one of every two or three cardinal sug- 
gestions simultaneously made. Hence if a 
cluster of delusions holds sway in the objec- 
tive consciousness, we should deal with one 
at a time, beginning with the most dangerous 
and disposing of that at once. Suicidal 
thoughts, for instance, demand immediate 
and exclusive attention, 
s 273 



Hypnotism in Culture 

N^ervoTis instability or exhaustion, stimu- 
lation with alcohol, mental preoccupation, a 
determination to give one's self up, curiosity 
as to what the operator is doing, watchfulness 
of procedures, self-analysis, and in most 
cases the presence of inquisitive or sympa- 
thetic on - lookers, are hindrances to hypno- 
tization. The general idea that it is going to 
succeed is favorable to the induction of the 
state. 

Hypnosis may be absolute, the suggestions 
may be selected with the greatest judgment 
and made with persuasive emphasis, the pa- 
tient may be controllable during the sleep, 
and yet post-hypnotic fulfilment may be 
actually nil. I have treated such a case. 
It was one of extreme neurasthenic insanity ; 
and I reached the conclusion, after many 
days of study, that there was not sufficient 
lecithin in the brain cells to retain an im- 
pression for any length of time, but that 
274 



Conclusions Reached 

there was just enough to be directly im- 
pressed by my personal presence. Hence I 
fed the cells with phospho-glycerate of lime, 
in order to increase the receptivity and the 
retentiveness of the mind that w^as operating 
through starved and inadequate organs. Six 
months after the treatment the patient was 
restored to perfect brain health and happi- 
ness. As the brain cells become filled with 
the natural phosphorus - bearing substance, 
the suggestions given weeks before began to 
take effect, and all delusions vanished. This 
result again suggests that the automatic 
mind once inspired is forever inspired. 

Frequent repetition of the hypnotic pro- 
cedure increases the susceptibility of the sub- 
ject. Whereas hypnotization often repeated 
as a strengthening and educating influence, 
with a view to inducing a healthy mental habit, 
is absolutely innocuous, the continual use of a ' 
hypnotized person for exhibition or other un- 
275 



Hypnotism in Culture 

worthy and useless purposes may eventually 
lead to physical exhaustion, weakening of the 
mental powers, hysteria, and even insanity. 
Hence the wisdom of restricting hypnotic 
treatment to those who thoroughly under- 
stand its dangers and are possessed of suffi- 
cient principle to use it conscientiously. 

In the hands of such persons, suggestion 
may be made a most valuable accessory to 
objective ethical training in the reforma- 
tories of the world. If the authorities in 
charge of institutions where the friendless 
young are cared for would encourage the 
practice of hypnotic suggestion, on the high 
plane projected in this volume, as a part of 
the moral curriculum, there is no question 
that, in a few generations, through the trans- 
mission of automatic impulses to right-doing, 
crime would be perceptibly lessened. Es- 
pecially are philanthropic women, who serve 
upon the boards of managers of homes and 
276 



Conclusions Reached 

asylums for the protection of wayward girls 
and the reclamation of outcasts, urged to 
consider this instrumentality in connection 
with the noble work for humanity they might 
do if they thoroughly understood and judi- 
ciously applied the science of suggestion. 
The religion of Jesus Christ unmistakably 
proclaims it right to exploit a legitimate psy- 
chological means for effecting the regenera- 
tion of the vicious and criminal classes. 
Right to place the automatic mind in control 
of any passion that is burning up body and 
soul. Right to suggest pure thoughts and 
wholesome aspirations to the subliminal per- 
sonality of a fallen woman in hope to make 
her clean. Right to exhibit to her, as a som- 
nambule, the serene beauty of a holy life. 
Right to admit her through the portals of 
hypnosis to appreciative communion with 
those women whose spirits walk abreast of 
angels. 

277 



Hypnotism in Culture 

Finally, the value of hypnotic suggestion 
from the educational stand-point cannot be 
overestimated. 'Not only may dull minds be 
polished, unbalanced minds adjusted, gifted 
minds empowered to develop their talents, 
but the educating mind of the school-child 
may tread that royal road to learning which 
ancient philosophers sought for in vain; the 
matured mind of the scholar may be clothed 
with perceptive faculty, with keenest insight, 
tireless capacity for application, unerring 
taste; and the imaginative mind of painter, 
poet, musician, discoverer, may be crowned 
with creative efficiency in the line of ideals 
that are high and true. The lesson of hyp- 
notism here is a lesson of man's susceptibility 
to limitless progression. Judicious sugges- 
tion secures the output of faculties inherent 
in his nature; and the state of hypnosis 
would seem to prove that we have within us 
an immaterial principle entirely indepen- 
278 



Conclusions Reached 

dent of sense organs and sense acquisitions. 
Its pinion is not reconciled to earth. It rep- 
resents a flight above the temporal, and hints 
of heaven. 



LIMITATIONS OF HYP- 
NOTISM 



LIMITATIONS OF HYP- 
NOTISM 

HYP^^OTISM, like every other agent for 
good, has its abuses and its limita- 
tions. 

Inasmuch as hypnotic suggestion, broadly 
viewed as in this volume, is many times as 
efficient an agency as objective religious ex- 
hortation for elevating character, or as any 
conceivable combination of passion and al- 
lurement for depraving it, society should bo 
adequately guarded against its practice by 
irresponsible or unprincipled persons. It 
should be looked upon seriously, if not with 
reverence; and repressive legislation is de- 
manded in the United States for the protec- 
tion of the public from the loathsome hyp- 
283 



. Hypnotism in Culture 

notic displays of dime museums, from the 
disgusting parlor exhibitions so degrading to 
American manhood and womanhood, and so 
destructive of the subject's intellectual equi- 
librium, and from unprincipled hypnotists 
who exercise their powers to gain their own 
selfish ends or to deprave their fellow-men. 
In view of such abuses, the use of hypnotism 
should be restricted by law, under the penalty 
of heavy fine and protracted imprisonment, 
in its employment for the cure of physical or 
mental disease, to reputable physicians; in 
its employment for the removal of moral 
taints and tendencies to crime, to intelligent, 
high-minded, properly qualified philanthro- 
pists. For the results obtained by suggestion 
will always be in harmony with the ideals of 
the suggestionist. If the ethical ideals of 
the operator are low, attempt at the reform 
of the subject must prove futile ; if high, the 
moral pervert may be raised to their plane. 
284 



Limitations of Hypnotism 

Especially should be suppressed the circu- 
lation, bj charlatans, of literature on hypno- 
tism, advertising instruction in methods of 
inducing this abnormal mental state, teach- 
ing ^^ the art of fascination " for money, 
promising to empower business men to se- 
cure patronage by hypnotizing prospective 
customers, and adventurers to win similarly 
the affection of heiresses, and illustrated by 
shameless pictures of hypnotic sharps in full 
dress ^' influencing " fashionably attired 
women amid the surroundings of sumptuous 
boudoirs. I have been called upon to dis- 
abuse a number of persons of the delusion 
that society is at their mercy if they can but 
master the mesmeric art. Hypnotic power 
is, like that of the poet, born, not made. 
High-principled hypnotism cannot be learned 
and cannot be taught. It is like the gift of 
teaching itself, which, as has been noted, 
John Milton long ago proved to be more in- 
285 



Hypnotism in Culture 

timately associated with the personality of 
the teacher than with the method of instruc- 
tion. Machine teachers may be turned out 
by professors of education; born good teach- 
ers are only ruined by them. So, safe hypno- 
tists cannot be manufactured to order. The 
success of hypnotic effort depends upon the 
ability to produce rapport; and only a few 
human beings are so constituted as to be in 
rapport with the majority of their race. 
Their sympathy must be genuine and thor- 
oughly disinterested; they must be persons 
of the deepest feelings ; they must be touched 
by that in life which is more precious than 
social ease, worldly distinction, business suc- 
cess ; they must be impressible by the deeper 
springs of good in human nature ; they must 
have insight into the darkest passions that 
convulse humanity ; and, above all, they must 
ardently desire to elevate and purify the souls 
in their keeping. Like the lapidary of pen- 
286 



Limitations of Hypnotism 

etrating sight, they must " know the gem 
whatever the setting." 

On the principle that there is no such 
thing as a specific for any disease, hypnotism 
is not universally adapted, is not a panacea 
or cure - all. Every scientific physician 
knows that routinism is the bane of thera- 
peutics, that all cases of disease must be treat- 
ed individually, according to their special 
requirements. To prescribe a uniform dose 
of any preparation for mankind at large is 
to ignore the fact that all animals present 
in their physiological functions variations 
on the same type; and while the same drug 
would produce the same class of action in any 
two human beings if adjusted to individual 
peculiarities, in many cases an excessive, in 
others a deficient or negative, result would 
follow. Besides this, the medicine itself 
may be improper; and the taking of an un- 
suitable remedy may effect no inconsiderable 
287 



Hypnotism in Culture 

amount of constitutional injury. The man, 
therefore, who claims to have a specific — that 
is, a drug which will invariably cure con- 
sumption, cancer, dyspepsia, etc., is an un- 
scrupulous falsifier. 

As early as 1604, King James I. empha- 
sized this philosophy in ^^A Counter-Blaste to 
Tobacco " : " And what greater absurdities 
can there bee, than to say that one cure shall 
serve for divers, nay contrarious sortes of 
diseases ?" l^owhere does the principle of 
special adaptation apply with greater force 
than in the selection of suggestibility as an 
appropriate therapeutic means. 

In conclusion, those who use hypnotic sug- 
gestion should be educated in the natural his- 
tory of the diseases they are treating, should 
know what to expect after the febrile symp- 
toms of typhoid subside and diphtheritic 
membrane clears off the tonsils. They 
should be incapable of suggesting to patients 
288 



Limitations of Hypnotism 

in such critical conditions the possibility of 
getting up and going about, ignorantly tak- 
ing the risk of their falling moribund from 
perforation or dead from cardiac paralysis. 
Therefore, in the interest of humanity, 
should the whole spawn of charlatans, im- 
postors. Christian Science and Faith healers 
that infest our country, be deprived of the 
right to juggle at pleasure with human life 
and human character, and be buried out of 
sight in the bottomless bogs of their own 
ignorance, superstition, and pantheism."^ 

* The following act, to prohibit public or private 
exhibitions of hypnotism, otherwise known as mes- 
merism or Braidism, including catalepsy, is now un- 
der consideration by the New York State Medical So- 
ciety : — 

The people of the State of New York, represented 
in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows: 

Section 1. — Any person who gives public or private 
performances, or in any way whatever practises upon 
or causes any person to enter into any hypnotic or 
cataleptic state or condition, with or without the lat- 
ter's consent, is guilty of a misdemeanor. This sec- 
tion shall not be extended to apply to duly author- 



Hypnotism in Culture 

The duplex personality is a conception of 
God. The instrumentality of suggestion is 
but a bit of science revealed by God. The 
machinery for garnering souls is perfected, 
and the fields are white unto the harvest. 
Who shall the reapers be ? Shall they be the 
inconsiderate, the ignorant, the sordid, the 
sensual, the malevolent, who trample the 
wheat beneath the heels of their selfishness 
or scatter it to the whirlwind of their pas- 
sions ? Who thresh for day's pay, leaving 
the precious grains of character to mildew 
in the straw ? Or shall they be persons of 
trustworthy judgment, of unassailable prin- 
ciple, of broad education and wide philan- 

ized physicians and surgeons engaging in hypnotism 
at the bedside or in a duly incorporated institution 
for the relief of pain, the cure of disease, or for ex- 
perimental or scientific purposes; provided that the 
person to be operated upon be over the age of twenty- 
one years, or if under that age, that the consent of 
his parent, guardian, or other person having legal 
custody of him, be first obtained. 
290 



Limitations of Hypnotism 

thropy, sincerely loving their neighbors as 
themselves, and fully realizing th'eir responsi- 
bility to the Almighty for the souls He has 
called them to exalt ? Who shall the reapers 
be? 



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